Emergent Leadership: It’s Not Just a Good Idea

For anyone looking, the need for effective leadership is quite apparent. The UN Climate Report, released in October 2018, delivers warnings of a pending crisis that will include worsening wildfires, rising sea levels, ocean and land desertification and other environmental challenges. These worsening conditions will lead to difficulties for everyone, but especially for those least able to protect themselves in these situations. Social inequity and environmental injustice will be multiplied many times over.

While many local governments have shown initiative, along with citizen groups, there are many communities where a concerted movement towards real solutions is lacking, only to be exacerbated by the complete vacuum in leadership of any kind at the federal level in the U.S. While confusion reigns at the heads and bodies of most government agencies, seemingly deliberately constructed by forces that benefit from NOT addressing climate change and other environmental justice issues, proven solutions such as sustainable building and restorative design, are lost in the middle.

Those of us committed to reversing this negative trend once and for all need to lead from whatever vantage point we find ourselves in regardless of whether we have societal “permission” via title or position. We need to brave. But we also need to be smart.

Because Emergent leadership is about leading more effectively from any point in the system…that is from any “chair,” it is an approach that offers greater opportunities to those committed to turning this dire situation around.

Based on behavioral science and mindful leadership philosophy, and unapologetically aimed at a specific agenda – a thriving, socially just, and ecologically restorative world, the EMERGE Leadership model offers strength, direction, and tools to anyone personally and professionally committed to advancing solutions.

In the new online course we dove deep into two skill sets that draw from the model: Enrollment and Facilitation. With both skill sets, we are asking ourselves to go beyond good business management practices, the stuff of which Organizational Leadership MBAs are made of. If that was all that was necessary, we’d be mostly there already. No, EMERGE asks us to stretch – ourselves, and those with whom we are working.

Enrollment is a way of intervening strategically, by using logic and intuition to inform and inspire those you wish to join you in a desired positive change. It can seem a bit magical, because what occurs is greater than individual contributors can do by themselves or working together in the conventional sense. In their book, Active Hope, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone talk about generating new possibilities by acting from a place of power “with” rather than power “over,” and describe this as “1 plus 1 and a bit.”  Within the EMERGE model, we use the term “enrollment” deliberately. We are not simply influencing others to do something we’d like to see. We are asking them to do that something by acting from a place within themselves. We are “enrolled,” and now we are enrolling others.

When presenting Facilitation skills in the webinar, we were doing so specifically within the context of planning and facilitating collaborative experiences. It’s commonly understood that collaboration is the best way to achieve solutions that “stick.” A healthy collaborative experience must be planned and effectively executed, however. Although a great deal of lip service is offered around collaboration, it is quite rare that we take the time to get the basics right. By that I mean good meeting planning and follow through.

Emergent leaders go further. With Emergent leadership, we use behavioral science and mindful practice as a basis for understanding where collaborators are in terms of potential solutions and for creating enjoyable learning experiences more likely to kick-up those solutions. One of the topics covered in the Facilitation segment of the webinar is “constructive facilitation.” This expands the role of the facilitator beyond the traditional role of educating and gleaning. The constructive facilitator is asked to question, synthesize and contribute. This requires a more mindful approach, and perhaps more bravery.

A core principle of the EMERGE leadership model is that of servant leadership, where the emphasis is on “growing” leaders as part of our leadership work. With Emergent facilitation, we nurture and support great leaders who exist and/or arise from within the social system where the facilitation is taking place. They remain to effectively maintain and build on solutions after we move on. We need more leaders, leading from where they are. Imagine if with every project we engage in, we help create more leaders, and then through enrollment and facilitation as well as other emergent leadership skills, they in turn are able to create more leaders. This is what the EMERGE leadership model does and what ILFI hopes to accomplish through its EMERGE Leadership in-person workshops and online courses. Emergent leadership can help us be brave, smart, and effective as work to solve climate change and social and environmental justice issues.

Hundreds of professionals have taken in-person EMERGE workshops since they began in 2011 and over 200 professionals have taken the online course mentioned above. I encourage you to join them. ILFI is continuing to offer public and private in-person workshops. For more information about private workshops contact education@living-future.org. The next public workshop is May 1st and will kick off the 2019 Living Future unConference. Space is limited and seats are going fast. Register today to reserve your spot. Participants who register by April 3, 2019 will receive a free copy of EMERGE: A Strategic Leadership Model for the Sustainable Building Community.

ILFI will be adding more EMERGE education covering other leadership skills including strategies for mending social inequities in the future.

Stay tuned, “Enroll,” and Lead! The World needs YOU!