Leading from the side

WE WON! In my little seaside village, a boat club wanted to build a honking great boat ramp right on the waterfront park, which would have disrupted the fishing enthusiasts and local swimmers - just to make it easier for a few rich people to launch their massive boats. For the first time in my life I got engaged in a public campaign. I thought it was important enough to raise my head above the parapet, and there just didn’t seem to be enough voices at enough volume, so I set up a Facebook group and a website and so on.  

As a consequence (and after a false start) I was invited to join an established group that was under new leadership. I called it the justice league. Nobody else called it that, but it was a great group of people, chock full of skills and knowledge and most importantly a genuinely collaborative spirit. Everyone had their role to play, and mine seemed to be chief noise-maker (not a stranger to that role). 

After numerous submissions and hearings, the application for the boat ramp was declined, which we duly celebrated.  

What I observed from a leadership perspective was how my role evolved. Before I joined that group, I took it upon myself to step into what I saw was a void and tried to project manage and build a group around me. That worked pretty well, but when I was invited to join forces with the justice league, I had more time and space to hone in on what was really needed to further our cause. We had an excellent chair and a bunch of people who got different things done. My role was to support those people and be part of the leadership fabric, with plenty of time to focus on noise-making. 

Now that we’ve won, we enter a new stage – what should we do with the beautiful waterfront park? Having stepped back to a support role, I can see I’m going to have step forward again into another different leadership role, hopefully with at least some of the same people, but with a very different purpose. 

Some of you may be familiar with Landmark Forum. In their leadership course, they require you to take on a project and then step back from it so others can carry it to completion.  

It’s a lesson I try to remember: leadership isn’t always from the front, sometimes it’s from the side. We don’t have to be champions to be winners.