#MaDASC quote #2: Participatory Leadership – Dee Hock

The second extract of inspiring quotes for #socialcare #leadership, so badly needed for the post-Covid emergency world.

These are all taken from my book "Making a Difference in Adult Social Care - Release your leadership ambitions" published in 2014 and still relevant. It makes clear that you can demonstrate leadership now, today, whatever your formal role in your organisation or community. It is full of stories of past and current leaders in their fields.

This extract tells of how I came across the inspirational writings of Dee Hock:

By chance, during the writing of this book, I was invited to join a training course outside Harare on ‘The Art of Participatory Leadership’, where I met many inspiring young black Zimbabwean civil society activists – positive and enthusiastic despite some of them having suffered wrongful arrest and beatings for their activities. The teachings are sometimes called ‘The Art of Hosting’, defined as ‘an approach to leadership that scales up from the personal to the systemic using personal practice, dialogue, facilitation and the co-creation of innovation to address complex challenges’. (www.artofhosting.org)

One of the authors recommended was Dee Hock, founder of VISA, which I discovered was created as and remains a network of member organisations – despite its huge presence globally and the trillions of pounds, dollars, euros, etc transacted through its systems. His book ‘One From Many – VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization’ (Berrett-Koehler, 2005) is well worth a read. To paraphrase, he says that the priorities for a manager come in this order:

• “It is a never-ending, difficult, oft-shunned task. It is ignored precisely because it is incredibly more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behaviour of others.”
• “Without their respect and confidence, little can be accomplished. Peers can make a small heaven or hell of our life.”
• “Select people of good character, introduce them to the concept, go before and show them how to practice it. If those over whom you have authority properly manage themselves, manage you, manage their peers and replicate the process with those they employ, what is there to do but see they are properly recognized, rewarded and stay out of their way?”

He summarises:

“Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, employ good people and free them to do the same. All else is trivia.”