Week 2 Identity and participative practice in collaborative leadership

Introduction

This week’s learning is based on the two key dimensions of leadership that inform the course as a whole – identity and participative practice. Identity is a blend of how we think of ourselves and how others think of us – and identity shapes how we approach collaborative leadership. We need to start thinking of ourselves and our work differently, if we are going to be effective in collaborative leadership practice.

This week also introduces the idea of participative practice, rooted in ideas from informal democratic practice. By democratic we do not mean that members of staff vote on issues as they come along for organisations, although such models do exist and can be interesting. Rather, we adopt democracy as an ethos, a way of thinking and practicing that is relational and places a priority on critical reflection, respectful but also conflictual debate. We have to think and act in certain ways in order to be able to practice good collaborative leadership: and it is collaborative leadership that seems particularly suited to tackling wicked problems.

By the end of this week you will be able to:

• define identity as far as it relates to collaborative leadership;
• describe identity as enacted through the language and practices used
• identify the various sources of your identity – as a professional, a civic activists, a family member and organisational partner
• define participative practice and its significance for leadership work in the voluntary sector
• describe some of the main aspects of your own identity and practices you value
• reflect on the kinds of practices that seem to define the organisations you work on behalf of.

1 Identity and participation

Listen to the following extract from Ellen’s story:

Download this audio clip.Audio player: declvo_1_audio_week2_ellen.mp3

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript

ELLEN

It's been a few months now that I've been in post. More than anything, I suppose I'm struck by the differences between how Family Time people go about their work every day, and the council team that I've not long left behind.

At the council, staff time and priorities were-- how shall I say this? Closely monitored. You know, actions recorded through daily record sheets. And staff used to complain all the time that they didn't have enough discretion to act on their own initiative, or beyond what we had to do because of our statutory obligations. And sure, they worked very long hours to support clients, and were usually relieved to go home at the end of the day to decompress, you know.

Being a senior officer at the council developed me in lots of ways, I think. One of these is that I got better at seeing the world politically. Good evidence is very important, obviously. But on its own, it's just not enough, if you want some proper change.

And it's not like one thing, politics, is bad, and the other, evidence, is good. No. I came around to seeing the world like our local politicians, you know? These are people who care about their communities. Their views on how to tackle problems might differ from mine, but the end goal was very similar. You have to be able to build a political consensus for change in policy. Otherwise, you just can't get to that safe and caring and productive environment for children.

Now, Family Time. There was a lot of discretion here in determining which families got offered support and how. The staff here were very flexible with their part-time hours. And, you know, let's face it, they nearly always worked longer hours than they were paid for. No formal record of that, of course.

But I just know from informal chats and keeping an eye on things myself, they kept really minimal notes of their interactions with families. And, you know, they were local, right? So it's really normal to bump into these families on the street, around the local town.

I love that the staff and volunteers here were so supportive of each other-- always doing stuff together socially. I mean, real pals who knew each other before Family Time via the church and other things. And whenever Family Time had special events, the staff didn't come reluctantly. They really came enthusiastically, and they brought along a bunch of their personal contacts and friends, which was a great way of recruiting volunteers. They had those contacts with local schools and community groups and counsellors, part of the community.

I know that if head teachers were worried about a child, they would often call Family Time to work with a family, because they were trusted. There was a local children's centre that provided premises for weekly free play sessions-- so important for these children.

I think everyone-- the trustees, staff, the volunteers-- openly say, like a badge of honour, that the organisation is built on trust and personal relationships, not bureaucracy. And I really get that. You know, I'm a mum, too, and I love kids. I can't stand it when I see children suffering some injustice, or, you know, just sadness, I suppose. You see a lot of things in this job, and you can't unsee them. These organisations, they have to work for children.

So, you know, I can see that these are obviously very different ways of working. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I'm not daft. I mean, I don't want to break something that's really working well. But there's stuff that we could do much better here, too. I know, though, that I've been brought in here for a reason-- to grow and professionalise the operation-- but of course, without completely losing that magic, that really relational, embedded in the community side of things that's been so important.

End transcript

Download

 

Listening to this extract, you should develop a good sense of the following, crucial dimensions of the leadership fabric that acts as context to the challenges facing Ellen:

• how Family Time is seen as an organisation;
• how Ellen is seen as a leader;
• how Family Time’s staff view their work and themselves in that work;
• how local government workers view their work and themselves in that work;
• the webs of practices employed by Family Time in its everyday work.

We summarise and capture these dynamics as related to two substantive dimensions of leadership: identity and participation. It is these dimensions that shape how we approach this course. This week will be dedicated to providing you with a primer on both.

2 Leadership and identity

It is often difficult to change how we view leadership in practice because of what we refer to as identity. Over the years we have been informally trained to think of leadership as residing in single leaders, rather than as a practice built between people in collaborative ways.

In this section, we will provide our definition of identity, before moving on to discuss how identity informs all kinds of leadership work within voluntary organisations.

In this course we see identity as something that we can create ourselves but also as something that is imposed upon us by social and political norms. Identity is how we think of ourselves and how others think of us. Identities can act as a kind of lens that enables certain types of leadership thinking and practice while restricting others. Identity is therefore very important for leadership practice, as it acts as a filter for the kinds of work we regard as legitimate leadership practice.

More than many other sectors, voluntary organisations draw on a number of different identities. Most voluntary organisations are an eclectic mix of volunteers, paid staff, professional experts and supportive partners. Each decision and practice embarked upon by these people further builds the identity of the organisation.

The following activity serves to draw out what we mean by identity.

Activity 1 Ellen’s story reconsidered

Timing: (25 minutes)

Re-listen to this week’s extract from Ellen’s story. Remember that identity is comprised of how people think of themselves, of what they think makes them what they are – at work, at home, in relation to their communities, their beliefs and so on.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: declvo_1_audio_week2_ellen.mp3

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript

ELLEN

It's been a few months now that I've been in post. More than anything, I suppose I'm struck by the differences between how Family Time people go about their work every day, and the council team that I've not long left behind.

At the council, staff time and priorities were-- how shall I say this? Closely monitored. You know, actions recorded through daily record sheets. And staff used to complain all the time that they didn't have enough discretion to act on their own initiative, or beyond what we had to do because of our statutory obligations. And sure, they worked very long hours to support clients, and were usually relieved to go home at the end of the day to decompress, you know.

Being a senior officer at the council developed me in lots of ways, I think. One of these is that I got better at seeing the world politically. Good evidence is very important, obviously. But on its own, it's just not enough, if you want some proper change.

And it's not like one thing, politics, is bad, and the other, evidence, is good. No. I came around to seeing the world like our local politicians, you know? These are people who care about their communities. Their views on how to tackle problems might differ from mine, but the end goal was very similar. You have to be able to build a political consensus for change in policy. Otherwise, you just can't get to that safe and caring and productive environment for children.

Now, Family Time. There was a lot of discretion here in determining which families got offered support and how. The staff here were very flexible with their part-time hours. And, you know, let's face it, they nearly always worked longer hours than they were paid for. No formal record of that, of course.

But I just know from informal chats and keeping an eye on things myself, they kept really minimal notes of their interactions with families. And, you know, they were local, right? So it's really normal to bump into these families on the street, around the local town.

I love that the staff and volunteers here were so supportive of each other-- always doing stuff together socially. I mean, real pals who knew each other before Family Time via the church and other things. And whenever Family Time had special events, the staff didn't come reluctantly. They really came enthusiastically, and they brought along a bunch of their personal contacts and friends, which was a great way of recruiting volunteers. They had those contacts with local schools and community groups and counsellors, part of the community.

I know that if head teachers were worried about a child, they would often call Family Time to work with a family, because they were trusted. There was a local children's centre that provided premises for weekly free play sessions-- so important for these children.

I think everyone-- the trustees, staff, the volunteers-- openly say, like a badge of honour, that the organisation is built on trust and personal relationships, not bureaucracy. And I really get that. You know, I'm a mum, too, and I love kids. I can't stand it when I see children suffering some injustice, or, you know, just sadness, I suppose. You see a lot of things in this job, and you can't unsee them. These organisations, they have to work for children.

So, you know, I can see that these are obviously very different ways of working. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I'm not daft. I mean, I don't want to break something that's really working well. But there's stuff that we could do much better here, too. I know, though, that I've been brought in here for a reason-- to grow and professionalise the operation-- but of course, without completely losing that magic, that really relational, embedded in the community side of things that's been so important.

End transcript

Download

 

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Spend 10 minutes making notes of the various ways in which you could describe Ellen’s identity.

Now spend 15 minutes thinking about what kind of things these various identities enable and what they restrict: how does Ellen’s identity shape her particular view of what needs to be done at Family Time?

Comment

Here are the different identities we drew from the extract of Ellen’s story.

Ellen is portrayed as a children’s services professional. The way she thinks and sees the world is strongly informed by the body of legislation, regulation, evidence and practices amassed in the world of social work. These are manifested in processes to be followed in relation to families with problems and in the expectations she has of those who work for her.

Ellen is someone who is a committed member of a local community. Her civic identity is apparent in the fact that she appreciated the informal ties and some of the strengths of the informal ways in which Family Time works. It is often difficult to draw on such informal and intangible ties from the more constrained identity of a children’s services professional.

Ellen is someone who is a family member. She takes her role as a parent seriously. Ellen cannot help but see the world through this lens – her emotional awareness and sensitivity towards suffering makes sure of that.

Ellen is political. By political we mean that she recognises the importance of organising and progressing coalitions of support among diverse groups of people. She has developed this pragmatic identity through her years of trying to enact change in a democratically mandated organisation (local government).

Ellen is also a woman. Now, this does not mean that she is not masculine (rather than male) in her approach to leadership: bossy, very rational, very assertive, and so on. But from what we can see of her narrative, Ellen is more open and inquisitive than merely being a masculine stereotype – she hopes to learn a lot from her current staff, rather than assuming that one leadership practice from her local authority will transfer straight across to her new context.

3 Defining identity

Neither one of these identities presented above can be regarded as Ellen’s complete identity. Her identity is a combination of all of them and no doubt more. Identity was defined earlier as something that is built for us. Some people may choose to view Ellen very clearly as a rigid local government manager, for example. But identity is also something we can influence and shape as we go along – we can defy the way others position us through our practice.

How we position ourselves in identity terms is a gateway to how we think of and practice leadership: it shapes us and our practice.

This is not to say that Ellen’s discretion to establish her own identity is removed in advance. To suggest this would be the equivalent of saying that she is a prisoner of the different forces and people around her. Yet not to acknowledge the huge amount of social and political pressure that exists in shaping us as people is also naïve.

We are heavily influenced by the norms of those who bring us up – parents, siblings, close friends and those who educate us. As we get older, we develop our own tastes, passions and interests. Not many of us invent these options but instead we draw on a range of choices that pre-exist us: we choose to identify as committed to a certain political or religious identity; we learn to name certain sexual feelings we have one thing or another; we seek out people with similar leisure interests as ours.

Likewise, we are taught to relate to certain ways of thinking about leadership in relation to our identities. Either thinking of ourselves as natural born leaders, as good, obedient followers or as something much more collaborative. How we think of leadership is closely tied to how we position ourselves and how others position us.

Yet we can also break these restrictions and challenge the norms given to us by others. People challenge and influence their religious affiliations, for example: to change their perspectives on LGBT issues. People challenge their traditional gender roles: for example, women winning the right to vote, and now demanding equal treatment at work and in society.

Figure 1 Defining identity.

Show description|Hide description

The image shows a woman in a blue and white dress standing by an open gate. Her right hand is resting on the gate and she is looking at a ploughed field. At the opposite end of a field there are trees and a church spire visible. The sky is cloudy.

Figure 1 Defining identity.

4 Identity work

We adopt the title ‘identity work’ to convey the notion that identity is active, that it moves with the practices and language we adopt: such as collaborative leadership. Another example will help you understand this point:

Harry, like many people, young and old, develops his identity through practices we would have thought impossible a relatively short time ago. People’s phones and tablets are a part of them, almost like an extra limb. They develop as people as a result of a huge range of influences and communications.

Who we are informs what we do, and vice versa. Harry is no different to a retired woman (let’s call her Mair) whose identity is influenced by her friends, her experiences of volunteering in her local charity shop and the opinions she receives from her daily newspaper. In both cases we can talk about the practices and technologies that shape their identities. Of course, we can re-interpret who we are as people and organisations through the language and practices we adopt. Mair could change her newspaper, could learn how to navigate a smartphone or could start dressing like a teenager.

In more meta terms, we can look at the bigger strategic decisions of organisations as generating an identity. Many larger voluntary organisations have embarked upon ambitious partnerships with large corporate businesses: the argument in favour being that such partnerships achieve tangible benefits, with the criticism being that they can erode the radical edge of an organisation. Other voluntary organisations have become providers of services for government: again, the benefit of such an arrangement is argued to be the tangible improvement of people’s lives, with the criticism that a relationship of dependency upon government is created. Other organisations have chosen a more ‘independent’ path but risk being something of a voice in the wilderness when it comes to influencing society. Each of these strategic positions creates an identity for the organisation and the people within them: corporate partner, critical friend, service provider, agitator, critical voice and so on.

Identity is not static but is continuously being created by small and big acts, through the language we use and the personas we adopt. Identity is an active process: it is better thought of as identity work.

5 Voluntary sector identities

In this section, we explore identities that are sometimes attributed to voluntary organisations and their leaders, before exploring the significance of identity for collaborative leadership in more depth.

Figure 2 Voluntary sector identity

Show description|Hide description

This is a photograph of a group of volunteers serving food.

Figure 2 Voluntary sector identity

A well-read guide to the law for voluntary organisations is Hayes and Reason’s Voluntary but not Amateur (2009). This title captures (and challenges) one identity that is sometimes attributed to voluntary organisations and their leaders – a group of well-meaning amateurs. In recent years, there has been an effort to convey the professional nature of the sector and its leaders, with an emphasis of the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector. However, there may be times when individuals and organisations in the voluntary sector want to distinguish themselves from the groups more commonly referred to as ‘professionals’, or from some of the connotations of a ‘professional’ identity.

A second identity that recurs in narratives of the voluntary sector is that of the lone rescuing hero – consider the founding figures of nineteenth century charities. Some of our long-standing charities are still named after these figures – for example, Barnardo’s, Spurgeon’s, and Fegan’s.

Consider this headline from the Guardian’s recent reporting of the refugee crisis – ‘The idealists of Lesbos: volunteers at the heart of the refugee crisis’, accompanied by a picture of volunteers apparently rescuing a child from the sea (Guardian, 15 April 2016). Or this line from later in the same report, ‘At no other time in modern history have NGOs or individuals stepped in to make up for the limited resources of a near bankrupt country that has struggled to cope with the influx’. While it is good to acknowledge the commitments and achievements of individuals, and clearly makes for good publicity, many in the sector will be uncomfortable with identifying themselves primarily with the lone rescuing hero identity.

More broadly, there is a continuing debate in the voluntary sector literature about whether there is something that is recognisable as a ‘voluntary sector identity’ (Milbourne, 2013) that captures the distinctive characteristics and attributes of the sector as a whole, and in turn informs the actions of individuals within the sector.

Activity 2: Leadership and identities

Timing: (50 minutes)

Reflecting on how you see the identity of the voluntary sector will inevitably shape how you view leadership, so in this activity you will reflect in more depth on the identity of the sector. We created the word cloud below from words we found used to describe the distinctive identity of the voluntary sector in the academic and practitioner literature. Spend 20 minutes reflecting on which of these words (if any) you identify with. Are there any words you would add?

Figure 3

Show description|Hide description

This is collection of words which together form the shape of a cloud. The words include ‘expert’, ‘alternative’, ‘innovator’, ‘influencer’ and ‘contractor’.

Figure 3

Share these words with a colleague in the voluntary sector and ask them which of these they identify with – or not. How does their response differ from yours? In your learning journal, reflect on what your response to these words might suggest about how you see the sector’s identity, and your own identity within it. How might these constructions of identity impact on the ways in which you collaborate with others in and beyond the sector? Make sure you title the post with the week number and the number of this activity, Week 2 Activity 2. Spend 30 minutes doing this.

Comment

How easy did you find it to begin to identify a voluntary sector identity through this activity?

Milbourne (2013) is one of a group of researchers who argue that a distinctive voluntary sector identity has been eroded by the policy and political context since the 1990s – the move from public sector grants to competitive commissioning and the increased role of voluntary organisations in the provision of public services. Voluntary and public sectors have historically each impacted on the development of the other, but Milbourne argues that the sector needs to recover a distinctive identity. This sense of distinctiveness (or otherwise) informs the actions of individuals within the sector, and the ways in which it is perceived by those outside the sector, and therefore impacts on collaboration across sector boundaries. Could part of the distinctiveness of voluntary sector identity be that people within the sector are great collaborators?

We conclude this week’s learning by reflecting on how our notion of participative leadership practice can contribute to the development of an identity for voluntary organisations that is open but also meaningful.

6 Participative leadership practice and identity

Participative leadership practice is strongly informed by informal democratic practice. When people mention democracy, what usually springs to mind are things like television and parliamentary debates between politicians, the act of voting in elections and the rituals that accompany the tallying and reporting of results. Yet democratic practice can also be conceptualised as something with a much broader significance, as something that can permeate how we engage with our work and society.

If we boil down democracy to its core meaning we are left with something that seeks to convey a sense of relationality between people, a sense that people work out what is in the best interests of a community: how people can participate and have a say, in other words. Democracy also conveys the sense that the meaning we attribute to various things (policy, practice, identity) is contested and up for grabs. For example, what does it mean for a voluntary sector organisation to enjoy independence? Independence is an important word for voluntary organisations that is sure to excite and provoke. Yet how easy is it in our interconnected world to be ever truly independent? The meaning of independence will inevitably vary depending upon who you speak to in the sector.

Engaging in participative leadership practice means that democracy is purposeful: not only sitting around in rooms talking. It is shaped in a way that acknowledges that organisations have to move forward, have real work to do and decisions to make. Participative leadership practice is a state of mind as well as a state of practice: it seeks to mainstream active and rich, conflictual (when necessary) practice into the everyday working of organisations.

Participative leadership practice is a way of drawing people into decisions but also into the everyday work of organisations. We outline a participative leadership practice as working along two main dimensions – identity is crucial to both.

6.1 Democratic practice as work on the self

The first dimension of participative leadership practice is work on the self, work you engage in, with yourself as the primary focus. This is primarily reflective work, where you critically engage with your own commitments, knowledge and beliefs (Connolly, 2004 and 2005). This is about opening yourself up to the potential for collaborative leadership.

What is democratic about this process is that you reflect deeply on who you are being in certain situations (in meetings, in your conversations and relationships with trustees, partners and volunteers) and ask what it is they might need from you, rather than what you would prefer to offer them. Critically reflecting on your own work in leadership means that you start to see yourself as dependent on those around you – you start to see yourself relationally, as deeply entwined in the lives and fates of others. We ask ourselves what kind of identity would my group value from me, or, what kind of identity does my group need of me now? These are two different propositions, of course. What a group wants is not always what it needs. As Vangen and Huxham (2003) state, sometimes adopting a leadership identity involves a degree of steel and pragmatism: this is only problematic if it becomes the default position.

6.2 Participative and relational practice

We have already stated that identity is shaped by and through practice. Identity is not static but something that moves and changes with practice. For example, every time we write something about our organisations or ourselves on a website or social media forum, we influence the way in which we are seen, and perhaps also the way we see ourselves.

Participative leadership practice throws into play our own and our organisation’s identity. It does so because practice is relational. Practice does not happen in isolation but exists in the spaces between people (Cunliffe and Eriksen, 2011). A simple illustration of the point is that it is impossible to think of leading without the presence of following – not everyone can lead all of the time and, likewise, not everyone can follow all of the time (Ford and Harding, 2015).

Focusing on leadership as a practice inevitably means we think about the kinds of practices we create together, rather than looking inwards at the kinds of people we think we are (Raelin, 2011). It is a subtle but important shift in thinking: leadership is less about us as individuals and more about the practices our relational work generates. If we think of leadership as a practice, then we should also think about how we can nurture and develop the most helpful parts of our practice and challenge those aspects of our practice that are less helpful.

Practices are informed by our identities but our identities are also shaped by our practices. The two are locked together to such an extent that the lines between the two blur significantly. Participative leadership practice recognises the fact that we are mutually dependent on one another and tries to draw out and learn from our experiences of practice.

Week 2 quiz

Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz.

Week 2 quiz

Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’ve finished.

Summary of Week 2

We started this week by stating that identity acts as a filter for the kind of leadership we practice. Identity is something that is given to us by organisations and other people and groups but is also something that we can shape and influence. We stated that identity is dynamic, that it moves as we practice, though identity work. Having spent time on identity in general, we then considered identity in relation to voluntary organisations and asked you to reflect on the distinctiveness (or not) of the voluntary sector.

We then introduced the idea of participative practice as practice that is democratic and relational. We described leadership in this context as offering collective direction to practice. Participative practice was described as making sense of the self and in terms of practice between people.

Now go to Week 3.

Keep on learning

References

Acknowledgements

This free course was written by Owain Smolović Jones and Carol Jacklin-Jarvis.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Images

Figure 1: loganban© 123RF.com

Figure 2: © Steve Debenport/iStockphoto.com

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Don't miss out

If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University – www.open.edu/ openlearn/ free-courses.