Supporting Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice

Description

We live in a time when coalitions, alliances, and networks are growing. People have created many networks, and some are now creating networks of networks. These networks will be essential for successful change, but they are not as intentional as is a community of practice. Exchanges among members of a network tend to be less focused and more dependent on how and when individuals choose to engage with those in the network.

Fortunately, research and work done on both adult learning and on "communities of practice" offer solutions to this leadership development challenge. Two quite different approaches-one from working with the poor in Brazil, the second from working with global corporations--come together to mark a clear path.

The first is the pioneering work of Paulo Freire. Working among the poorest of the poor in Brazil, Freire developed the practice and theory of Critical Education. (See Pedagogy of the Oppressed,) He demonstrated that people who had never learned to read could quickly develop skills of literacy and complex reasoning if those skills would help them improve their lives. If they learned to think critically about the forces creating their poverty, they quickly learned the skills and analytic tools that could help relieve their condition.

Freire's work has since been substantiated by many others, in a wide variety of cultures and populations. The essential lesson is this: When people understand the forces creating the adverse conditions of their life, and how they might change those forces, they become eager and rapid learners. They are capable of learning sophisticated skills that far surpass traditional assumptions about their intellectual capacity. And they learn these skills faster than anyone would have thought possible.

Communities of practice develop from a need to do one's work more effectively. Because there is such a great need to connect with other members of the community, their work together can emerge quickly as a body of new competencies and methods that spread rapidly throughout the community. Therefore, facilitating communities of practice among pioneering leaders is a deliberate strategy to speed-up the emergence of new ways of organizing, of new global leadership practices that affirm rather than destroy life.

Emergence is life's process for taking local actions to achieve global impact. In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring to life simultaneously around the system. If these changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond their own locale. However, if connected, then local actions can emerge as a powerful influence at a more global or comprehensive level. (Global here means that the system operates at a larger scale, not necessarily the entire planet.) These powerful emergent phenomena appear suddenly and, most often, surprisingly. Think about how globalization and corporate power suddenly came to dominate, or how the Berlin Wall suddenly came down. Emergent phenomena always exert much greater power than the sum of their parts, and they always posses unique qualities that are different from the local actions that engendered them.

Emergence happens through connections. Therefore, any process that can catalyze connections becomes the means to achieve change at a global level. We are working intentionally with this powerful process when we name, connect, resource, and illuminate communities of practice. Inside these communities, leaders learn quickly, create new practices, and feel supported in their pioneering work. And through emergence, their relatively small, local efforts can become a global force for change, powerful enough to create the world we all desire, a world where the human spirit flourishes as the blessing, not the problem.

Original URL

http://www.berkana.org/articles/pioneering_leaders.htm

http://www.berkana.org/articles/pioneering_leaders.htm