This research report explores the concept of leaderful organizing and provides research on building leaderful movements in Europe.
Introduction
Leaderful organizing is strategic for movements who believe in the power of collective leadership. It enables activists and organizers to exercise power, respond to changing contexts and scale up their impact.
This study report aims to examine the concepts and practices of Leadership and Leaderfulness in movement and organisations across Europe and identify core competencies that activists and organizers would need to develop in order to build leaderful movements.
We conducted a Participatory Action Research between 2020 and 2022 with an international research team of nine activists and organizers from across Europe coordinated by the European Community Organizing Network (Slovakia) in partnership with LABO (Belgium), Ulex project (Spain), and Zelena Akcija (Croatia).
The team collectively designed, conducted and analyzed the research guided by the following questions:
- How is leadership conceptualised and practiced in movements across Europe?
- How is leaderfulness conceptualised and practiced?
- What are the key competencies for leaderful organizing?
The research was based on a literature review, 22 interviews and 67 online survey responses with movements from 15 countries across Europe as well as discussions among the research team members in regular meetings and workshops. We found that there is a diversity of conceptualisations and practices of leadership covering both individual and collective competencies.
For many activists and organisers who identify with the values of social and environmental justice, the idea of “exercising power” is viewed as problematic.
Our research looks at the connection between hesitations around the idea of power and a reluctance to embrace the concept of leadership across movements in Europe.
This research responds to the movement discourses on leadership and the tendencies to reject power, hierarchies and pursue “leaderlessness”, which often resulted in movements limiting their impact in the long term.
We propose a framework to build a shared understandings of leaderfulness as a strategic approach to distribute power and leadership in movements in ways that enable effective, accountable and agile collective action for social transformation.
The following chapters present an overview of the literature on:
- leadership and leaderfulness,
- the research methodology,
- key findings from the research,
- and a proposal for the competencies needed to create more leaderful movements.
The key findings were that leadership is essential for movements and it has both individual and collective dimensions. Leadership is already present – formally or informally – in all forms of movements, organising and activism. Even movements that aspire to be “leaderless” are still led through informal and couvert power dynamics and structures.
The results of this research will inform the development of a competence framework, a toolkit and training and educational curriculum on “Leaderful Organizing”. We hope to challenge and inspire activists and organizers to rethink the leadership practices in their movements and organisations and consider developing the competencies to build leaderful movements.
Contents
- 1. Introduction – p. 3
- 2. Leadership and Leaderfulness – p. 5
- 2.1. Conceptualising Leadership
- 2.2. Conceptualising Leaderfulness
- 2.3. Leaderfulness vs Leaderlessness
- 3. Methodology – p. 11
- 4. Key findings from European movements and organisations – p. 12
- 4.1. Leadership concepts and practices
- 4.2. Leadership challenges
- 4.3. Leaderfulness concepts
- 4.4. Leaderful movement practices
- 5. Competences for leaderful movement organizing – p. 20
- 5.1. Intrapersonal competencies
- 5.2. Interpersonal competencies
- 5.3. Systemic competences
- 6. Conclusion – p. 25
- 7. References – p. 28
- 8. Appendix – p. 29
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Leadership and Leaderful Organizing: Research on Building Leaderful Movements in Europe (PDF)