Personal & Technology 12 Jun 2007 09:51 am
What is leadership?
Some current events are making me think a lot about leadership. I’ve been (and am) a leader in a variety of contexts, and perhaps I haven’t thought a lot about, or articulated, what I think leadership is, and means. But some recent events in a community I care deeply about have made me reflect on this, and be much more conscious about the ways I am a leader.
I have been involved in the Linuxchix community (a community focused around fostering and supporting women in Linux and open source) since 2000, which, of course, is eons ago in internet time. I have been around for controversies big and small (or small controversies made big, which seems endemic in electronic communities.) I have met many ‘chix face-to-face, and count some as friends. I have found help for my varied and sundry Linux and open source technical issues, and I have helped others with theirs. They have heard both my experiences with varied Linux distributions, as well as my experiences in seminary, and with partners old and new. I have received so much from this community, and I have given what I have been able. It has been a fixture in my daily life for a long time, and so the situation that faces us now as a community is affecting me greatly.
At this moment, a very significant proportion of long-time volunteers of Linuxchix (leaders in their own right) have become disaffected with the present (newly appointed) coordinator of Linuxchix. The process by which that happened, and the way it is playing out, is making me think a lot about what leadership is (and isn’t) - and about how it has failed for this community. I don’t want to give a review of what has happened - I’m sure others will - but I want to reflect some on what I’m taking away from this situation.
Leadership is a role to be taken with great seriousness, as well as with great openness - leadership is more like an open hand than it is a like a closed fist. Leadership is as much listening as it is talking. There are times when leadership is just that - pushing forward, being out on the edge, setting the agenda, and getting things done. Linuxchix needs plenty of that. But there are just as many times when being a leader means following. It means listening to what people are saying, answering questions honestly, taking a moment to stop and ask questions before taking precipitous actions - or being willing to reconsider actions that some express concern about after the fact. Being a leader means being willing to admit that you’ve made a mistake, moved in a wrong direction, and are willing to do a course correction.
Being a leader isn’t easy. I know that it’s something I’ve resisted a fair bit over the years, even though I’ve learned that I’m pretty good at it. But I didn’t get good at it without a lot of mistakes along the way. I hope that the present coordinator can find her way clear to a place of being the kind of leader this community really needs - open, responsive, willing to admit mistakes, and more of a listener than a talker.
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