SELF-ORGANIZATION: CLAIMING LEADERSHIP

Leadership Lessons from Social Movements

It seems these days that our world is filled with movements. So many people call their work a movement if it engages a large group on the Internet; commentators casually apply the term to a group of people getting together in common cause for only an afternoon.

But you can’t call your work a movement just because you have a lot of followers, or thousands of people have listened to your TED talk. A movement is not defined in numbers, although that’s our beloved measure of popularity and success.

A movement is defined by the people willing to stay dedicated to their cause for a long time, those who take risks, work hard, expect defeat, and still keep going.

A true movement must have the strength and capacity for enduring over time: Mandela’s autobiography was titled Long Walk to Freedom. Above all, movements must endure hardships and setbacks for very long periods and mourn together as gains disappear in the Age of Decadence. This is why so many of them refer to their work as “The Struggle.” The South African struggle against apartheid lasted nearly a full century, from early 1900 to the election of Mandela in 1994.¹⁶

In the history of social reform, movements have accomplished their work through the combination of self-organization and charismatic leaders. Whether their purpose is to create reform, rebellion, or revolution, they are self-organizing at the beginning. They engage people’s passions and hopefully their intellect, but it varies. Sometimes people just want to get out and protest; sometimes they offer a detailed critique of root causes of an issue; sometimes they seek to embody new values and ways of being as they protest the old ways. But to endure for the long road ahead, sane leadership is essential.

Those who have led movements have a great deal to teach those of us now setting out to create islands of sanity. We differ in our purpose and desired outcomes, but we are each standing up against the dominant culture. We are all working diligently to create possibilities for human beings to behave far better than the current culture influences us.

I have witnessed and learned from some great movement leaders: working in South Africa during the golden age of Mandela; learning from friends leading the Farmworkers Union; experiencing close hand the work in Detroit begun initially by Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs; listening to Congressman John Lewis relate his hard won knowledge of the path of struggle.¹⁷ From witnessing their dedicated, intelligent, compassionate leadership, here are some of the things I’ve learned.

Motivation

People are motivated by devotion, not passion or a short-lived desire to contribute. Devotion means that, once engaged, you do not leave.

People either know or soon discover that this is the work for the rest of their lives. It will take much longer than anyone thought.

Your work occurs within history and in a specific place. It’s important to locate yourself within the history of other struggles. How are you participating in and contributing to the human experience? It’s also important to ground yourself in place, accepting responsibility for where you are, what has happened here, what can be learned from being here.

Action Learning

You have a theory of action. As you put that theory into action, as you interact with those in power, new strategies and practices become clear. You learn how the system works as you work with and challenge the system. You adapt to be more effective in reaching your goals.

Vigilance around behaviors and tactics is essential so that those acting to change things don’t shift back to the old behaviors they’re now opposing. You need to expect that the values and practices of the dominant culture will show up in you if you were raised in that system.

Time to reflect and learn from experience is essential. Knowing how to host exploratory conversations and support reflective processes are paramount leadership skills.

Thinking well, with insight and discrimination, are sources of power. Two essential skills are dialectical thinking to explore paradox, difference, and the evolution of issues; and systems thinking to determine root causes so energy is not wasted on superficial actions.

Leadership

Leaders are essential for their vision and insight. Keeping “eyes on the prize”¹⁸ is a leadership function. But the danger for visionaries is blind followership and a cult mentality where people surrender their free will and common sense to the leader even if the leader abhors this. (And too many enjoy it.)

Leaders carefully and consciously attend to the integrity and actions of the movement: Do actions embody its values? Does it need to shift tactics and strategy? Does it need to rest and reorganize itself or seize the moment and push forward?

The work of social change requires a commitment to personal change. Leaders must be self-aware, noticing how they’re being influenced and changed, in both positive and negative directions. Embodying the values is the only way to ensure their vitality.

The key to leading effectively is knowing the things that make up your environment and then helping to arrange them so that their power becomes available.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War