Some Midlands based research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently looked at ‘Routes and barriers to citizen governance‘. It discovered that many groups feel marginalised from the political process. Maybe no great surprise given the low voting in recent local government elections. But it comes at a time when, nationally, Government want citizens to be more engaged in their communities - to shape the services they receive and to help develop their neighbourhoods.

The research focused on the importance of strong community leadership to raise the level and impact of community governance. I was asked to address the issues of community leadership at the launch of the report and highlighted a few key themes:

1. Community leadership can be a battleground between councillors and local activists with different agendas and values. It has to be a partnership if the community is not to become paralysed.
2. Trust is at the heart of effective community leadership. Trust is about honesty, competence, accessibility, commitment and a good understanding of local needs.
3. Amazingly, many leaders do not know how they come across or how they impact others. The report recognised that many councillors provide excellent leadership, but others haven’t a clue about how to impact young people, different ethnic groups, council officers etc. Leaders without good self awareness will always struggle to make things happen.
4. Community leaders need followers (they can look rather foolish without them!). Followers come when the leader champions the community and champions the different talents within it - engaging people and listening to their ideas. At the heart of this is the leader’s ability to give power to others.
5. I would encourage leaders to reflect on their impact and to be much more deliberate in finding ways to maximise not just the number of followers, but also the quantity of their followers’ contribution.

Community leadership is something you work at with feedback from others, a generous attitude and a commitment to putting the community’s success above your own ego.

Tags: citizen+governance, community+leadership, empowerment, followership, Joseph+Rowntree+Foundation, trust

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under Engaging People, Leadership, Purpose and Vision, Values. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.