What is Shared Understanding?

Shared Understanding is knowing the rules, objectives, and boundaries of the pursuit. It is the rules of the game. It is knowing the spirit and culture and protocol of the game. Shared understanding is a state of being that is derived, not left to accidental and wishful thinking. Shared understanding is about renewal and alignment.

Creating shared understanding is not about doing what we have always done because we are not in the environment that we have always been in. Our context has and will change again and again. Our environment is fluid, unpredictable, dynamic and unavoidable. To reach our destiny, we must traverse the environment as it is, not as we would like it to be. We must be fluid, unpredictable, dynamic, ever present, and watchful. We must always be on the lookout.

The three critical pieces that create shared understanding in an organization are the vision, the mission, and the values. These three structural components must be unique to your organization, well defined and articulated, and authentic. How do you accomplish that? Different organizations accomplish it differently, but the best way is to imagine your way forward. The best way is to use the collective wisdom of your organization to imagine its full potential, its utopia. Imagining your future requires recognizing the demands of the larger context in which your organization operates, assessing the skills, knowledge, and mindset of your organization currently and asking what needs to change now to result in our making this vision a reality.

What are the specifics of imagining? The specifics of imagining are active thinking skills and active emotional reasoning: questioning, observing, pushing, probing, wondering, synthesizing, connecting, realizing, creating. The work of imagining is asking what to do we do? Why is it necessary and important? Does the world need us to do this? How does it change the world? How does the world value what we do? How do we value what we do? Are we sure? Is this exciting? Do others care? Do we care? How can we do it differently and better than anyone else? What do we need to believe in and do in order to make our dream for the future come true?

Once the organization has done the difficult yet necessary and invaluable work of imagining their future, crafting a vision and mission, and articulating their values, everything else - all decisions, actions, words, focus, etc. - derive from these guiding statements of possibility, purpose, and particular project criteria. This development work creates shared understanding because it lays out where we want to do, what we want to do, and how we will do it with integrity, in a way that reflects out fundamental beliefs and values.

These three components become the beacon that guide the way forward.

Who's "in"?

"He won't share with me." Human nature. We see it in young kids all the time. And, we see it in adults all the time. It is impossible to create a cohesive team if members of that team are not willing to share. Some people might not share because they are unskilled at sharing. That is workable. But unwillingness is not tenable and will keep the leadership team bound in various uncomfortable, ineffective, and time-wasting ways. Unwillingness is nuclear waste: toxic, dangerous, and highly destructive.

Here is how the reasoning flows: Does any member of your team display an unwillingness to be open-minded and learning new ideas, habits, ways of thinking?

If yes, is this unwillingness overt or covert? If a team member's unwillingness is overt, you are lucky. Cause and effect reasoning is pretty easy to apply to overtly counter-productive behavioral and emotional ways. If a team member's unwillingness is covert, be careful because the covert, passive aggressive actions - inspiring and manipulating the back channel conversations, feeding the grapevine, talking a happy game in the meeting and not following through - are manifestations of power. Power is little Johnny who gives his younger brother the toy to play with, but decides to give him a punch along with it while Mom is not looking. Little Johnny's and Little Susie's who do not like to share grow up and come to work.

People create a community of shared leadership by being intentional about creating a community of sharing. They intend to share the responsibility of leadership, the process of leadership, the learning of leadership, the actions of leadership, the reach of leadership. The team has to mutually commit to figuring out what our team means by "shared" - what it looks like on a day to day basis, what we understand it to mean, how it defines our thoughts and actions, how we create systems to reinforce what we want to happen in our relationships.

The process to convert a patriarchal view of leadership that is grounded in position on the organizational chart has many stages. The best place to begin is to start with the realization and intention that a team that shares the responsibility for the future of the organization will be able to accomplish and maintain more than one single individual. The first step: intention.

The second step is a question: Who's "in"?

Who's "in" is important. The people that are "in" need to be courageous. They need to risk the discomfort of being vulnerable and intimate with their team members. They need to be curious and open-minded, willing to learn as they go, sometimes in a public way. They need be willing to be wrong and to fail because learning anything new includes replacing old ideas with new, more useful ones. They must learn to reflect because only through reflecting on our own thoughts, skills, and mistakes do we learn.

Being "in" requires a lot, mostly commitment, passion for the cause, faith in the journey, and trust in your team members because they will be your fellow travelers.

Are you "in"? Know what that means, what it entails. And, know that if you are not "in", you are in the way.

What is Shared Leadership?

Leadership is a combination of mindset, behaviors, skills, and a cause. Leadership, thus, is more like an attitude than it is a position. Anyone, regardless of their position in the organization can exert leadership. To me, leadership is kin to "voice" because this deep calling bolstered by skills and behaviors motivates everything you do. Every action reflects, speaks, "gives voice" to the cause and its urgency.

Leadership can be shared when many people unite their strengths, perspectives, skills, and passions toward the same cause. Shared leadership, thus, propels a mission or a vision. It is in the uniting of our unique skills and interests and strengths that we bring full force to the cause.

Shared leadership is a collective undertaking to accomplish a shared vision. Shared leadership requires teamwork but it is deeper because each individual is intentionally working to exert leadership which includes improving his or herself in effective ways so that one's participation and contribution are at their fullest potential.

What do Leaders do?

First and foremost, leaders challenge the status quo. They interrupt what is going on now in order to influence the future. Leaders look to the horizon, the end game, deep into the future and ask what will get us there? They question everything.

Managers, by contrast, ask how can we keep current things going, or how can I maintain the status quo? Managers embrace the status quo, not stand up to it.

Aspiring and working toward a future vision requires a lot of things of the leader. Aspirational leadership requires detachment. Many people benefit and are complacent about the current state of being. A leader who desires to innovate and adapt to the needs of the future must detach from the emotional grousing of the people who admire the status quo. To accomplish this detachment, a leader must have confidence, courage, and commitment about doing the right thing for the sake of the future. This commitment and courage to doing the right thing are the internal resources a leader draws upon as many people work to keep things as they are.

The powerful image from the revolution at Tiannamen Square in 1989 makes the point that a leader can emerge from anywhere. This unnamed man stands on principle, courage, commitment, and hope for a better future for China. He stands strong despite risk of personal injury. He stands before the rigid, powerful status quo, the Chinese government so wonderfully epitomized by the might of the tanks. As we remember from watching the coverage, this one stand off disrupted and created many protests throughout the city.

A leader protests. He declares the status quo as unsafe, objectionable, unsustainable, unsuitable for the needs of the future. He expresses in many ways, as many as are needed, a vision for the future that is more relevant. A leader acts. She stands up and leads that first step toward realizing the future and invites others to join in. In these ways, a leader transforms.

What is Leadership?

We usually know who the leaders are, or we assume we do, from their positions in the organization. We know who is the CEO or who is the Head of School or who is the leader of the marketing group. But, I think too often we assume that the person in that role is a leader, the only leader. I also think that too often we confuse leading with managing. Management is not leadership.

Management is the act of situating the details of a program or idea that is already in place. Managers focus on tasks. They work to get things done. Managers have people whom they manage -- subordinates, "people in my division." Managers are usually not leaders. Managers perpetuate the status quo.

Leaders have causes, ideas that they believe are right and necessary. Leaders focus on people not tasks and checklists. Leaders work to inspire people to be their followers and to help them accomplish the objectives of the cause. Leaders inspires with their vision and their passion. Leaders are following the force of a vision, a right choice, and they expect challenges and hurdles along the way. Leaders do not shy away from conflict, instead they see conflict as necessary to inspire more and right followers. Leaders are not people who seek stability and sameness because leaders are in touch with the ever-changing nature of their environment and the importance of their cause in making a difference in the world.

The table above from ChangingMinds.org provides a nice comparison of leaders and managers.