This article is part of a series exploring an alternative global story about power and what this means for our leadership and lives.
The image shows men in suits in a typical office environment on one side. One the other a diverse colourful group of peoplewalk under a rainbow of colour that is starting the dissolve the office.
What do you think of when you hear the word “Power” or “Leader”? Take a moment to shut your eyes and let images, ideas or words fill your mind.
A global marketing firm once asked their network of country offices to share images on the theme of power. They received a series of homogeneous images of solitary men in black suits standing beside skyscrapers or nested in the clinical white and grey of the typical Western European or American office.
Next, they asked them to share images on the theme of “feminist” power. They were flooded with a diverse spread of colourful pictures. The UK’s women’s football team, the lionesses, red lipstick and black heels from France, a group of activists draped in a rainbow flag and more. No two images were the same, but they had some commonalities, portraying groups of people surrounded by vibrant colour and energy.
Shut your eyes again. This time, open your mind wider and ask yourself what power and leadership could mean if we were free from the norms we have inherited and the stories that permeate our culture. What could power look like if we were able to dream wildly and rebelliously?
The Tyranny of the Hero Leader
For a long time our dominant stories and norms about power and leadership have focused on individual, “hero” leaders. These leaders can often appear benevolent and inspiring but a dangerous belief, that they can lead because of their superior ability relative to others, lies at the heart of their leadership story. When their agenda or vision is thwarted or they come to believe too deeply in their superiority we can easily see them switch into domineering, controlling tyrants.
“In most organisational structures the dominant paradigm of leadership is characterised by the top man, the boss — the one in charge. In this model, leadership is a solo endeavour, always in control, rarely making or acknowledging mistakes. Sometimes, this model is cloaked in benign attire: the leader who motivates, inspires, consults and listens, providing space and opportunities for growth. Other times it is unabashed tyranny: the leader who brooks no challenge, expects obedience, and rewards sycophants. There are, of course, many shades between. Yet at the core lies dominance and individualism.” Srilatha Batliwala
Our collective belief in our leaders’ superiority, attracts other superiority myths like a magnet- helping to shore-up their right to power. This is why our most influential leaders have been predominantly, white, wealthy, able bodied men.
This pervasive model of leadership squanders our collective imagination; our ability to create truly innovative ways forward through bringing together diverse and even conflicting ideas and visions. Instead, we are limited by the vision, capacity and imagination of one individual leader or group of leaders.
The consequences for our world are disastrous. We do not have the institutional containers for the collective, long sighted leadership we need to rise the global challenges we currently face- a rapidly worsening climate crisis, stagnating economy and increasingly polarized and fragmented political landscape.
The “Representation” Trap
Many of us have looked at the predominantly white, male faces that dominate leadership spaces and equated progress to diversifying the make-up of the small elite groups who currently shape our world.
This laudable dream falls short of what is required to deliver a more just and sustainable future for the majority of our planet.
We may replace our heroes and make marginal changes to the agenda but we remain limited by the collective vision and insights of a very small group of people. We still miss out on the insights of people deemed inferior or less able to lead and we still fail to harness the collective insights of larger communities or groups.
An Alternative Story
Growing dissatisfaction with the capacity and speed of representation focused approaches to deliver a more equal and just world has led to a body of work and scholarship unearthing marginalized alternative models of power and imagining new ones.
There are many parallels and similarities between these alternatives from the ubuntu philosophy in Southern Africa to emerging systems change thinking.
The most successful movements to transform power the world has seen have been fuelled by feminism, particularly the feminism of systematically oppressed groups- those who identify as female, black, queer, poor and disabled who have too often been cast as the inferior foil to our hero leaders. These thinkers, who are intimately acquainted with the darkest face of our current story about power, offer us an alternative narrative we can adopt within our own lives and leadership.
A different story starts within ourselves. We must unlearn the norms and narratives about power that we have been taught since early childhood. This means fundamentally rejecting the idea that the “most able” people in our society have the right to exercise power on behalf of others.
If our recent history can teach us one lesson it is that power used for good on behalf of others is never good enough. From the “civilizing” mission of the colonists to modern forays into international development shaped by white saviorism- our dominant western model of hero leadership frequently permits and pursues great evil under the guise of good. Fundamentally, the model hinges upon a hierarchy of worth and ability and therefore necessitates rather than dismantles oppression.
Instead, we must recognise that everyone has a right to shape the conditions they need to thrive in our world.
At their heart, feminist movements that have sought to dismantle oppression in all its forms (rather than replace one hero with another) have focused on reimagining power as an exponential, collectively owned force for change.
In Our Own Lives
This means that when we get power, if we wish to see a more just, sustainable and safer world, then we must seek ways to share it, to build collective visions and avoid the temptation to impose our own agenda onto others (even if we believe we are right or acting in the best interests of those around us!).
A wise feminist, Patti Whaley, former Chair of Action Aid, once told me that if we “continually find that we are always the smartest person in the room then we have completely failed at feminist leadership.”
We must let go of the idea that the answers we need will be found within our expertise, skills or experience alone, and instead recognise that we can only unlock the creative innovations we need when we come together across divides, disciplines and cultures.
Wemust not only seek to share formal power when we get it but recognise and use the informal and invisible power we already have to create change. Formal power, exercised over others or shared, is the most visible and recognised form within Western culture but it is far from the most common or potent form of power at our disposal.
The narratives and norms, the images and words that sprang into our minds when we shut our eyes together at the start of this article, live within us and between us. Collective Power is invisible but fundamentally shapes our reality. When we change our own beliefs and behaviours about leadership we unlock power within ourselves and in turn unlock power in others.
It is this form of organic, collective storytelling that can write new dreams into reality. From the story of Jesus of Nazareth and the early Christians, to the first scientists distributing their pamphlets in secret to the #BlackLivesMatter movement; when we dream a different dream together we change the face of our world.
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
Leading Like A Feminist means recognising that the only dreams with the power to save us from our current crises are those that we dream together. The dream of any individual leader, however inspiring, will not be enough.
So what does it mean to Lead Like A Feminist?
Leading Like A Feminist means creating an alternative story about power and leadership, that replaces our need for individual heroes with the belief that we are all powerful.
It means recognising that the key to transforming our world (and to the longterm survival of our species and planet) is ditching the dominant Western model of hero leadership and instead and learning to share and use power together.
Some Useful Resources
Action Aid’s Ten Principles of Feminist Leadership provide a short framework for embedding feminist leadership within individual or institutional practice. https://actionaid.org/feminist-leadership You can listen to Patty Whaley, former Chair of Action Aid, speak about the principles on Episode 1, Series 1 of the Lead Like A Feminist podcast. https://www.leadlikeafeminist.org/resources
Srilatha Batliwala (2010) Feminist Leadership for Social Transformation; Clearing the Conceptual Cloud. Available here: https://creaworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/feminist-leadership-clearing-conceptual-cloud-srilatha-batliwala.pdf
Coalition of Feminists For Social Change (2021) Feminist Leadership Learning Briefing. https://cofemsocialchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/COFEM_Learning-Brief-Series_Digital.pdf
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