Leaders Who Do This Are Tearing Society Apart

A friend of mine recently said to me, "I am never disappointed by the number of people who are in leadership positions, but who are awful leaders." I said, "Alright, what happened at work today?" We laughed before we got into the weeds of a problem so common, so universal, that it's tearing the fabric of society apart as we speak. What were we talking about? What was the problem exactly that he and so many others are familiar with? And how can we solve it?

Give me a few minutes.

Let's be clear. There is an epidemic of people who are in leadership positions who have no idea how to connect with their communities in meaningful ways. Too many leaders take a top-down approach to engaging their people. Many people got into these leadership positions because of organizational 'experience' or because of subject 'expertise' or maybe even because of their productive ability to 'get things done.' But when it comes to openly engaging people meaningfully or leading with vision, they fail. Big time. Some are trying. Far too many are not. Perhaps you know one.

Why does this matter?

A top-down leadership style without balance from the bottom-up seriously stifles innovation, affinity, impact, engagement, and motivation. If it's all "our way only" with no genuine space for other voices, ideas, or feedback, we're stifling innovation and suffocating creativity. If people don't have a sense of buy-in through their own participation, benefits, and contributions, affinity is going to go down. We can't be responsive to our communities if we're close-minded.

And that gets to the heart of what my friend and I were discussing. Top-down leadership is failing us as a connected society. There is a massive and growing disconnect between the leadership layer and our communities. It's happening everywhere. I talked about this briefly in my TEDx talk, which I gave about a year ago.

Too many leaders and organizations around the country and around the world are engaging with their communities, constituents, employees, customers, or supporters in a top-down manner. Many leaders don't even realize they're doing it. Worse, far too many proactively believe they're not top-down in their approach even though they actually are. You're probably thinking of someone in particular right now, aren't you? 

I know it isn't easy. And we can't expect perfection. But we should expect a commitment to people from our leaders. In truth, leadership tends to be more of the art (and management tends to be more of the science). But, like martial arts, leadership can be taught and practiced in methodical ways. We simply have put too many people into management positions and leadership positions in this country and around the world who are not formally trained or practiced in either. So, what can we and they do about it?

How do we stop being 'top-down'?

As leaders, we need to work toward advocating for, experimenting with, and supporting a broad spectrum of engagement for our people. We must go beyond the transactional and increase the interactional. We must balance the top-down with bottom-up in our meetings, presentations, events, conferences, campaigns, movements, groups, etc. Key to this is the concept of open feedback loops - open in that anyone can create them and anyone can participate in them. Leaders also need to 1) provide space for people to interact with each other, 2) help shape the conversations that happen within them, and 3) be responsive to the conversations that emerge from them. This is crucial.

Too many leaders are caught up in the bureaucratic, operational, logistics of existing systems, organizations, programs, etc. and they are forgetting to actually lead their people, let alone engage them in open, meaningful, and interactive ways.

To fight this, think of the SMART analogy, but let's extend it to be SMMAARTTIO (not a typo). Engagement opportunities for people should ideally be specific, measureable, meaningful, actionable, accountable, realistic, timely, transparent, interactive, and open. In the absence of these practices, we are dooming our organizations to slow, incremental change that's simply not agile enough for the times we live in. Just because they're employees, volunteers, or constituents doesn't mean they just want to 'work' and not collaborate more deeply on solving the problems or discussing the issues. Give them space, come at them with an open mind, but use your influence (and be genuine about all three). Give power away as a leader and I promise it will come back to you.

Let me be blunt. If you're having a town hall meeting with 500 people co-located together and there's no open, meaningful, and interactive engagement between participants as a whole, that's a wasted opportunity regardless of how good the keynote is or how busy the agenda is. In a world of YouTube and WebEx, people want, no, need meaningful interaction.  Those wasted opportunities ultimately contribute to a growing gap between leaders/organizations and their people (making leaders seem deaf or, worse, ignorant to their people). In civil society, it's causing a complete disconnect between NGOs and movements, a disconnect that is causing civil society to shrink and be far less effective. [15 minutes to introduce yourself to the others sitting at your table doesn't count. Smaller breakouts where it's still run in a top-down manner doesn't count either.] We need to stop conflating 'interaction' with 'networking' events and provide space for meaningful engagement around critical issues. Icebreakers and happy hours are supplements, not replacements, to interactive engagement.

At least many businesses and municipalities actually hold town hall meetings with employees and citizens (even if they are mostly top-down - no the 'public comments' section of the agenda doesn't count). When was the last time your favorite non-profit brought constituencies, volunteers, donors, and/or supporters together to create space for interaction on the issues that they focus on, where you got to meet and collaborate with the like-minded people who care about the same issue(s) you do? Was it transactional (e.g. giving money via a fundraiser) or interactive? Were there group brainstorming discussions? Shared decision-making? Opportunities for the marginalized and under-represented to speak for themselves? Or was it controlled top-down? Those marginalized and under-represented voices aren't just the poor and minorities (although, they certainly are) - they may include your employees or members who don't have awards or fancy titles. It might just be people championing different ideas or perspectives. They all need space instead of being spectators - a great tool for this that I'll post about another time is called Open Spaces. Check it out.

What got us here won't get us there

There is a time for top-down presenter-audience formats, autocratic leadership styles, and 'consultative' engagement. But leaders everywhere need to move away from the inauthentic, 'check-the-box', token-esque engagement approaches that are hardly meaningful. It's not working. In fact, it's weakening our social institutions. Maybe you've noticed. Workplace engagement low? Union membership falling? Non-profit volunteerism flatlining? Losing organizational/brand affinity? Given up on government? This is all connected to the failure of leaders to balance top-down approaches with bottom-up, open, interactive practices. It's like we're all collectively spinning our wheels in the mud and celebrating millimeters of progress -  we are all capable of so much more, and people know this deep inside their hearts. In fact, I'd go as far as to connect this to the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as a reflection of political parties and leaders who aren't being responsive to real people. 

As leaders, we can work to change this, but we need to be aware of our leadership shortcomings and pay purposeful attention to advocating for, experimenting with, and supporting a broader engagement spectrum that creates space for bottom-up interaction and participation. A lot is at stake.

Jesse Chen is an experienced leader, technology strategist, and the co-founder of Powerline, an exciting mobile app and web platform that helps leaders and communities interact in meaningful ways (now in private beta). Jesse gave a TEDx talk in May 2015 "Redefining Democracy for People's Power" that urges people to get involved in between elections in order to strengthen democracy. He was recently elected to the Board of Directors for Civicus, the global civil society alliance. This article was recently read on Jesse's new podcast, Connect the Dots.