Shared Leadership outperforms the lone leader

And the invisibility within success....

An image of a thriving ecological system as a vision for organisational success

What are the invisible components that make a successful organisation?

Take a look at the image and tell me if you can discern all of the different components ....

It is hard isn't it ? - but perhaps just about possible.

This ability to witness the components of an organisation is essential for leadership. Companies where the leader is aware of the people in their organisation - especially the strengths of those people - thrive and grow.

The danger is that the more we grow (which does not always equate with success) the less visible our organisation and those within it, become.

For a long time now, I have been thinking about how inter-dependant we are with so many invisible people.

Let me give you a few things to think about in relation to this. Let us take, for example - the great British delicacy of a fish finger sandwich, with a dash of tomato ketchup.

How did that get to your plate?

The Bread

The Fish Finger

The Butter

The Tomato Ketchup

Who and what are we dependant on for this delicious delicacy?

(Please feel free to quickly scroll though this - but please be aware of how much is involved without you even realising it)

THE FISH FINGER

The fish itself

• Species typically: cod, pollock, or haddock

• The fish's own dependencies: plankton, smaller fish, ocean currents, water temperature and salinity, oxygen levels, spawning grounds, the food web beneath it (krill, copepods, phytoplankton)

• Ocean systems: tides, the sun driving photosynthesis in phytoplankton, wind patterns affecting nutrient upwelling, the moon's gravitational pull on tides

Catching it

• Trawler crews, skippers, deckhands

• Boat builders and marine engineers

• Steel for the hull (iron ore miners, steelworkers, smelters)

• Net makers (nylon or polyethylene fibre, originally petroleum)

• Rope makers

• Diesel engine manufacturers

• Fuel: oil rig workers, refinery workers, tanker crews, pipeline workers

• Marine electronics: GPS and sonar systems (satellite manufacturers, rare earth mineral miners for electronics, (often children) satellite launch teams, ground control staff)

• Weather forecasters and meteorological satellite data

• Coastguard and maritime safety services

• Fisheries regulators and quota-setters

• Ice makers (to preserve the catch onboard)

• Dock workers, fish market auctioneers, fish processing plant workers

Processing

• Filleting machine operators or hand fillers

• Batter/breadcrumb factory workers

• Wheat farmers (for the breadcrumb coating)

• Millers

• Oil for frying: rapeseed or sunflower growers, oil pressing plant workers

• Refrigeration engineers and the coolant chemists behind refrigerant gases

• Factory machinery builders

• Food safety inspectors, quality control staff

THE BREAD

• Wheat farmers

• Soil itself: worms, fungi, bacteria, minerals, generations of decomposed organic matter

• Sun for photosynthesis

• Rain, or irrigation engineers and reservoir builders if irrigated

• Bees and other pollinators (even wheat, being wind-pollinated, exists in a landscape shaped by pollinator-dependent crop rotation)

• Combine harvester manufacturers and the miners/steelworkers behind them

• Diesel or increasingly electric tractor manufacturers

• Seed breeders and agricultural scientists

• Fertiliser producers (nitrogen fixed industrially via the Haber-Bosch process, phosphate miners, potash miners)

• Pesticide/herbicide chemists, if used

• Grain silo builders and operators

• Millers, milling machinery makers

• Bakers, industrial or artisan

• Yeast producers (a living organism itself, cultivated)

• Salt: salt miners or sea-salt evaporation workers

• Packaging: plastic bag manufacturers, or paper bag makers and the forestry workers and trees behind that

THE BUTTER

• Dairy cows themselves, and their own vast dependency web: grass, clover, other pasture plants, soil microbiota, water

• Farmers and farmhands

• Vets

• Milking machine manufacturers and engineers

• Electricians who wire the milking parlour

• Refrigerated tankers and their drivers

• Dairy processing plant workers

• Butter churners, mechanical or human

• The cows' feed supply chain if supplemented: soy or grain growers, sometimes from entirely different continents

• Breeders who developed the cattle lineage over generations

• Animal welfare inspectors

THE TOMATO SAUCE

• Tomato growers, often in glasshouses

• Glasshouse builders, glaziers

• Heating systems for glasshouses (energy workers again)

• Irrigation systems

• Pollinators, sometimes bumblebee colonies specifically bred and shipped for greenhouse pollination

• Harvesters, often seasonal migrant labour

• Sugar: sugar beet or sugar cane growers, refinery workers

• Vinegar: apple growers or grain growers for the alcohol base, fermentation microbes

• Spices: depending on recipe, could involve growers in entirely different countries (cloves, allspice)

• Bottling or canning plant workers

• Glass bottle makers: sand miners, glass furnace workers

• Or can makers: aluminium or steel miners, smelters

• Label printers and ink manufacturers

PACKAGING (across the whole meal)

• Plastic: oil extraction workers, petrochemical plant workers, polymer chemists

• Cardboard: forestry workers, pulp mill workers, paper mill workers

• Printing ink and dye chemists

• Recycling systems: waste collectors, sorting facility workers

TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS

• Road builders: tarmac layers, engineers, surveyors

• Bitumen for roads (a petroleum product)

• Gravel and stone quarry workers

• Bridge and tunnel engineers

• Traffic management systems and the electricians and engineers behind them

• Truck manufacturers, tyre makers

• Rubber: rubber tree tappers, often in Southeast Asia, and the ecosystems those trees depend on

• Tyre factory workers

• Vehicle satnav: satellite manufacturers, rare earth element miners (often cobalt, lithium, neodymium), the geopolitics and mining labour behind those elements

• Drivers, warehouse staff, forklift operators

• Port workers, crane operators, if any ingredient was imported

• Shipping container manufacturers

• Customs officials

• Fuel supply chain again, repeating at every transport stage

ENERGY

• Electricity grid workers

• Power station workers, whichever mix applies: coal miners, gas extraction workers, nuclear plant engineers, wind turbine makers and the steel and rare earths in them, solar panel manufacturers and the silicon miners and refiners behind those

• Grid engineers, substation maintenance crews

HUMAN INSTITUTIONS THAT MAKE ALL THIS COORDINATE

• Retail staff, shelf stackers, checkout workers

• Supply chain planners and logistics software developers

• Food safety and standards regulators

• Trading standards and customs bodies

• Banks and payment systems facilitating every transaction along the chain

• Insurance underwriters, since ships, factories, and farms are insured

• Advertisers and packaging designers

• Language and translation, since components likely crossed at least one linguistic border

THE NON-HUMAN AND ELEMENTAL LAYER

• Bees and other pollinators

• Earthworms and soil microorganisms

• Rain, sun, wind

• Ocean currents

• The bacteria in silage and fermentation

• Photosynthesis itself, the base energy conversion beneath every plant and, indirectly, every animal in the chain

• Geological time, since the fossil fuels involved are the compressed remains of ancient organisms

That is a lot of invisible components - people, eco-systems, machines! It brings me to the fact that:

There is no such thing as a self-made man, woman or leader.

We are completely dependant on a host of invisible enablers - from toilet cleaners in your buildings, to those who make toilet paper and from those who water the plants to those who built the digital devices you are now reading this on.

However, we are invested in the story of the 'Lone Leader' - not because we are completely ignorant of supply chains - but because it keeps us from feeling the impact we make on others.

We all know of the children working in horrific conditions in the mines within the Democratic Republic of Congo. The country holds over half the world's cobalt reserves and produces more than 60-70% of global supply. The DRC is home to over 50% of the world's cobalt reserves, and it plays a pivotal role in the global supply, accounting for more than 60% of world production.

How does it feel in your body reading that?

Are you uncomfortable with the thought that the device you are reading this with probably contains the minerals those children were forced to mine? - Better to think of ourselves as self-made lone hero's - right? T

his is what the myth is protecting and and shows the discomfort a leader must feel by admitting the mycelium of interdependency instead.

If we say -

"I did all of this, it is me that made this company" - we do not have to stick our fingers of feeling into the discomfort of knowing we did it by; laying people off, by paying some people below what they should have received and by choosing to be ignorant of the cost to others, of our decisions.

But here is the thing - once we start to acknowledge our interdependency - we thrive.

A major meta-analysis found that shared leadership predicts better team performance over and above traditional top-down leadership, meaning the team's collective leadership adds something that a single leader's leadership cannot create by itself..

The old idea of influence coming from dominance and status, is now being challenged, as neuroscience reveals that shared alignment is built by connectors who listen and bridge subgroups - acknowledging and creating interdependency - entanglement and thriving.

Are you getting the message? - horizontal networks of connectivity and sharing, promote thriving more than pyramid hierarchies.

Back to the fish finger sandwich.

The vastness of the involvement in getting in onto your plate, was not always the case. If we go back in time - from before a fish finger was invented, so lets say, a fish sandwich - we would have known many of the people involved in getting it onto that plate ... We would have known that community. Here are some images that Claude helped with.

How do we stop people becoming invisible to us?

It is only when we truly witness each other, that we understand the pivotal roles we play in the eco-systems of our organisations and much of this starts with the developing of 'islands/villages' within our organisations. (I have spoken about these in my bio-mimicry postings that you can read here ) By creating these, each person is witnessed and acknowledged within them. These then become entangled within the larger organisation, creating a shared network of knowledge of each other, their strengths and responsibilities.

If you are interested in finding out more

This mycelial framework of organisational change, forms the basis of my leadership training model.

If you are interested in using this approach in your leadership or having me come into your teams - drop me a line and let us thrive together and be witnessed.