Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:05:45 -0700WeeblySun, 12 Dec 2010 23:24:27 GMThttps://www.ethicalleadership.org/gs-blog-7/community-based-collective-leadership At the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations conference last April, I had a conversation with a participant who was experiencing despair at the deep divide in the relationship between a prominent funder and the people they aimed to serve. This individual wanted to learn how collective leadership could help.

Collective leadership is fundamentally about building relationships of a different kind --that can accomplish different results. These relationships hold power more collectively across positions, roles, institutions, perspectives. They tap into collective wisdom that can only be gathered by including a number of different perspectives that our organizations do not automatically access. Those engaging in collective leadership realize that social change has many complexities and we need to cultivate relationships more capable of learning together and discovering appropriate actions that fit local contexts.

This is not easy work and it is seldom quick work. Fostering deep relationships, investing in time for learning, engaging in emergence are big challenges for people driven by timelines, high performance, and delivering impressive outcomes. Collective leadership asks us to open up to our own transformations in how we do our work and view our roles. It offers great promise for shifting work in communities. This is particularly true where there is tension in community created by disparities, exclusion, or alienation there. Or where an institutional policy or practice under-serves part of the community.

This requires those of us in positions of leadership to step out of our comfort zones. It asks us to share our power so the community and our organizations can collectively hold the work – the purpose, plans, and action. It also invites us to open up to uncertainty and look at different kinds of outcomes such as new partnerships, community ownership of change work, and development of local approaches to change.

Where there are divides between our institutions and communities, collective leadership can help. We don’t need to maintain current divides. Collective leadership tells us what we need to do is to take the time and create the space for developing authentic relationships. At the Center for Ethical Leadership we say, “it only takes a small opening to create the space for a profound transformation.” Are you ready to create the opening?

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