Organic Leadership

An Emerging Leadership Lifestyle

The field of leadership is characteristic of sociology in such that as time passes by and as groups and organizations change, new sociological paradigms have to be constructed to understand the society that ensues ¹. Leadership has proven to be no different. Leadership is still a relatively young field, yet the theories and paradigms being produced are numerous and ever changing. Leadership is truly an applied science in an effort to influence people.

As society changes, our paradigms change and a new paradigm in leadership has emerged amongst us. This new paradigm fits into the symbolic framework as described by Bolman and Deal. ² Bolman and Deal detail four frameworks for analyzing leadership. These consist of the structural, human resource, political and symbolic frameworks. Loosely, this new paradigm has been termed organic leadership. While some consider it an oxymoron ³, there are other individuals and groups who have multiple thoughts about what organic leadership is and its valid application in different communities and organizations ⁴.

There have been three common streams of what people have termed organic leadership as found by this study. Some have used organic metaphors to soften the impact of what is still mechanistic leadership ⁵. Others have used the term organic leadership to re-describe the leaderless leadership ⁶ paradigm. The remaining stream that remains are six common patterns found by those who conceptualize organic leadership as an effective method of influence in organizations.

Organic leadership is a blend of leadership paradigms focused around a humanistic and compassionate style of influence. These blends of leadership attributes largely consist of servant ⁷, transformational ⁸ and relational ⁹ leadership styles. Organic leadership encompasses the humble attitude of servant leadership, making people the mission of the organization. It is transformational in that people will morph into the identity of their respective narrative community and organic leadership also reflects relational leadership in its attitude towards valuing people.

Six common patterns ¹⁰ emerge from the intersection of these different leadership attributes. They are common across the various thoughts and metaphors that can be found in the language used to describe organic leadership:

Relationships shaped by Collaboration
Community shaped by Narrative
Influence shaped by Compassion ¹¹
Direction shaped by Discovery
Authenticity shaped by Accountability
Networks Shaped by People Webs ¹²

The problem facing the field of leadership in terms of organic leadership are the various grassroots metaphors used to describe this new leadership style. These different metaphors can be hard to understand in terms of what an individual is actually trying to communicate. While one metaphor speaks in one way to an individual, it may speak a completely different way to another and there is no general consensus on what organic leadership truly is. This research attempts to provide a starting ground for a conversation on common language to describe organic leadership.

If organic leadership is to be used as a leader development model, practitioners need this common language to communicate an accurate understanding of what organic leadership is.

These six organic leadership patterns have been purposefully nuanced in such a way to provide a common description of organic leadership with common and understandable language. If organic leadership is to be used as a leader development model, practitioners need this common language to communicate an accurate understanding of what organic leadership is. This common language will allow those who study leadership to have a grounded basis for understanding organic leadership.

These six patterns are not easily contained in a set of blended styles of leadership. Due to the communal aspect coupled with the relational focus of organic leadership, it requires nothing less than a life immersed into the people web ¹³ that surrounds it to truly understand organic leadership’s power. Organic leadership is a lifestyle to be practiced and lived out.

Driven by An Experience-Based Society

A major influencer for why this new paradigm in leadership is emerging is the way that society has shifted.

A major influencer for why this new paradigm in leadership is emerging is the way that society has shifted. According to economists, societies are shifting from service based economies to experience based economies. ¹⁴ Gilmore and Pine describe the experience economy that follows the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the service economy in their book The Experience Economy. ¹⁵ The act of acting differentiates memorable experiences from ordinary activity ¹⁶ and if this is true, this is why organic leadership works right now. People desire experiences and these experiences can be acted out in the narrative which organic leadership thrives. Organic leaders and their respective communities will experience this level of memorableness because of this intimate narrative they weave.

Organic leadership is driven by transformational experiences at the relational and communal levels and this may be a factor for the numerous metaphors found to express organic leadership and organic community. People often express themselves through metaphor and these are always up for different interpretations of what the individual is communicating. The various narratives that organic organizations identify with cause the many experiences and metaphors that are used to describe them.

Measuring experience is no easy task and that is why grounded theory was the research method utilized to formulate non-metaphorical descriptions of organic leadership. The passion driving this research on organic leadership is the plague of consumerism on humanity ¹⁷ as well as the confusion between students of leadership in trying to understand organic leadership. All too often, people are influenced as if they are machines instead of the God-created individuals they are.

An influence filtered by viewing people as people and not machines, etc. attempts to correct this. If consumerism has plagued leadership with mechanistic tendencies then organic leadership is the solution for restoring a humanitarian and compassionate mindset, shaped by faith in God, back into leadership. The concept of influence shaped by compassion to lead others is an expression of an emerging society driven by collective social experiences. People are no longer looking for others who will simply provide because they are supposed to, but instead, people are looking for others who provide because they want to, and authenticity is the key to a values and experience based society.

Organic leadership is more replicable than it is scalable.

Organic leadership is more replicable than it is scalable. There are instances that one could conceptualize organic leadership as a large scale leadership style, but you would lose the level of personableness in relationships. More realistically, you could replicate organically led cells ¹⁸ that make up the larger hive ¹⁹ of an organization. Dr. West of Asbury Theological Seminary argues that you never lead more than a small group of people ²⁰ and if this is true, organic leadership would be an excellent form of leadership in a large enterprise if each leader along the strands of people webs leads organically.

Researched via Grounded Theory

This research as conducted through a grounded theory ²¹ approach has yielded six identifiable patterns of organic leadership. These results were then validated by having select advocates for organic leadership thought agree or disagree on whether statements describing these patterns were indicative of organic leadership or not via an anonymous online survey. These six patterns are purposefully not metaphorical in nature so that this emerging leadership paradigm is not as elusive as it tends to be in the various metaphorical images used to describe it.

Grounded theory attempts to deduce a theory based on extensive coding ²², conceptualizing ²³ and categorizing ²⁴ of data. Codes methodologically start correlating together to form concepts and then these concepts begin to correlate as categories that have resulted in the six identifiable patterns of organic leadership as identified by this study. The pro and con of grounded theory is that any and everything qualifies as data for research and as such no source was discriminated against without due diligence. Books, online articles, conversations and leadership development sites provided a majority of the data while an online survey helped to affirm and validate the results of this study.

Research directed towards finding a way of describing organic leadership started with a massive internet search to see what others had written about organic leadership. While there was reluctance in pursuing organic leadership in this method, it proved to provide the most useful data on the subject because organic leadership is truly a grass-roots movement and the best data comes from grass-roots media like the internet. As data was discovered it was coded under keywords like authenticity, community, direction and etc.

The following are noted observations ²⁵ that illustrate the six patterns of organic leadership as researched by this study.

1. Relationships shaped by Collaboration

Major emphasis on relationship.
Leadership stems from relationships, not individuals.
Influence manifests itself by helping people achieve their higher needs.
There is a Confucian property to relationships.
Leaders are fully present in the community.
(Strengths and Capacities) Social resources emerge from new relationships.
Relationships are collaborative rather than cooperative.
Individual participation instead of representative participation.

2. Community shaped by Narrative

Major emphasis on community.
Authenticity is crucial to the sustainability of community.
The skills of all in the community are vital, not just the leaders.
Values based community.
Holy Spirit is first, community is second.
Community is connected to the vine. (John 15:5)
Social resources are abundant instead of scarce.
Communities are mini-stories of a larger story generally.

3. Influence shaped by Compassion

Leadership emerges in the heat of battle.
Change is addressed as a simultaneous group movement and not a singular leader movement.
Influence is always natural, never forced.
The human spirit is liberated by harnessing power of human nature.

4. Direction shaped by Discovery

Direction emerges and evolves through trial and error.
Direction is discovered rather than decided.
Organic vision is one that is an expression of self-authenticity and integrity.
Language used is verb-centric instead of noun-centric.

5. Authenticity shaped by Accountability

Creative culture of freedom.
Authenticity coupled with responsibility.
Accountability
Members of organizational organism are transparent.
Leader authentically adds value to followers lives.

6. Structure shaped by People Webs

Horizontal dyad instead of vertical dyad in structure.
Fluid and Dynamic instead of Rigid and Static.
The organization is recognized as a living organism.
Shaped as and works as a living organism.
Properties of emergence are evident.
Natural instead of artificial in nature.
Leader not central to the organism. The entire group is central.
The title of leader is no more important than the title of follower.

The result of this coding effort was a natural formulation of codes into organic concepts. Eventually these organic concepts were worked and re-worked into the six patterns as illustrated above. These categories were tested for validity exactly by creating an online survey that had statements about each pattern using a Likert scale ²⁶ of agreeability. Select individuals were contacted that had developed thoughts around organic leadership and organic community and they were asked to take the survey because of their developed knowledge base around organic leadership.

Each of them has contributed to the organic leadership and organic community conversation and this has served as a measure of validity for the six patterns identified by research. The survey results yielded illustrate that there were true commonalities between individuals and that organic leadership could be described without the use of metaphors. Following is a formative theory of what it is to be an organic leader.

A Formative Theory

Unique to organic leadership are the patterns shaped by natural social resources available to any individual ready and willing to cultivate it. Organic leadership can best be understood by envisioning a hybrid of servant, relational and transformational leadership styles that find its influence filtered through a lens of compassion. True organic leadership is indicative of the six patterns described further on.

Organic leadership can best be understood by envisioning a hybrid of servant, relational and transformational leadership styles that find its influence filtered through a lens of compassion.

Again, organic leadership has proven to be its own mixed breed of leadership and it is emerging in the context of a shifting society that desires experiences fingerprinted with authenticity and respect. Organic leadership requires individuals ready and willing to be communal and collaborative with their followers in a way that leads to each individual being highly valued in the community. This concoction of individuals being highly valued alongside the people webs that occur in organic leadership results in groups and organizations that are fractal in nature. Each individual would be a point in the fractal that gives shape to the organization because of their individual uniqueness.

Organic leaders must have the capacity to live into a narrative because organic leadership and organic community is an experience driven paradigm that values discovered direction over tasks and goals. In this sense, organic leadership is certainly about the way in which a community pursues direction. They pursue direction through collective experiences. In this sense, organic leadership is as much about reaching and achieving goals as it is about how they do this. The following six patterns are indicative of leaders who engage the context of the organic leadership processes.

Relationships shaped by Collaboration

Organic leaders are highly relational leaders whose relationships are shaped by collaboration. This relational imperative fights against the mechanistic way of leading people and appeals to individuals who value the humanity of people. To the organic leader, valuing your people is valuing your organization. Relationships shaped by collaboration are painted with a Confucian ²⁷style of need between leaders and followers in an organic community.

These highly relational leaders stray away from the language of cooperation and move towards language of collaboration. Collaboration implies that there are highly valued individuals who have insight and knowledge that contributes to the social resources available in the community. This knowledge base is equally important compared to the social resource of leadership. Cooperation would negatively imply that the leader has all the insight and that individuals work under a vertical dyad so that the organization can grow and move forward. An example of this negative cooperation, “If you would just cooperate with me, then this would work out like it should.”

Organic leaders value relationships found through collaboration more than they do tasks and goals found through cooperation. This begins a transformational process that helps leaders influence people in such a way that they utilize others knowledge to propel their communities forward. The combined social knowledge in organic community is the momentum for sustainability.

Community shaped by Narrative

Organic leaders have strong narrative skills. They have the ability to immerse themselves and their followers in the story of a communal journey. Organic leaders highly value community and because of such are communal in personality. This is imperative for organic leadership because it helps leaders to build a shield against serving their community mechanistically.

Leaders that are communal begin influencing their communities through a compassionate filter. They also have a different look on tasks and goals. Tasks and goals are just something to accomplish during their journey as a community. Organic leaders help followers find value in the social relationships that exist instead of the tasks and goals they encounter in their community.

Organic leaders help followers find value in the social relationships that exist instead of the tasks and goals they encounter in their community.

In the unstable and fast paced environments ²⁸ that organic leaders find themselves in, these social relationships create a make or break mentality of trust between individuals. When situations of urgency arise, close-knit relationships are vital to the organically led group and/or organization because they are the sustaining force of getting through urgent objectives. The US Military illustrates this example well. In urgent combat situations, soldiers will entrust their life to another soldier to get through life or death scenarios together. Organically led organizations touch the fringe of this relational trust in order to take opportunity of urgency.

Community is highly values based in an organics ²⁹ mindset which leads to leaders and followers highly valuing authenticity in an organic organizational model. Generally, the narrative that leaders and followers are immersed in is values based as well. These narrative communities are a subset of rhetorical communities ³⁰ and the organic leader highly utilizes language that speaks to the living and breathing aspect of a community.

Rhetorical communities use language to persuade and convince people into action. The more common examples are lawyers, salespeople and etc. The language that each of these groups of people use is the influence element of leadership when leadership is present. Organic leaders carefully craft the influence of narrative community through the language they use into community members through the patterns of relationship and community.

Influence shaped by Compassion

Organic leaders display influence that is shaped by compassion. They realize that their followers are not machines but individuals that have emotions, wants and needs. Organic leaders realize that they are working with people who live and breath just as they do. Their influence is less effective in mechanistic structures but is highly effective in organic organizations that are often termed living organisms ³¹. This organic influence shows people that they are valued as people and that they are not cogs in a social-machine to be maintained. Influence is natural and never forced in organic leadership.

The Hawthorne effect is sufficient to describe why organic influence works well in organic communities.

The Hawthorne effect is sufficient to describe why organic influence works well in organic communities. The Hawthorne effect theorizes that people will increase production when they think they know they their participation is being watched. ³² This speaks to the highly relational aspect of organic leadership and its setting of narrative community. A high emphasis on relationships can be effective for growth of the organization because people know they are actively being engaged on a continual basis.

Influence happens through a horizontal dyad. In the organically led organization, non existent is a vertical dyad ³³ of influence found through traditional organizations. Instead, a horizontal dyad results in a people-web, driven by organic processes of social relationships. These social relationships result in social resources to move the community forward in the common direction that reflects the narrative of their communities.

Given this, revolving power is key to communication in an organic community. This revolving power is what sets up the non-linear organization and allows people-webs to form. An organic leader must be willing to temporarily lend power to the encourager of the community, the counselor of the community and etc. Leadership ripples through the relationships between leader and member in the community.

Direction shaped by Discovery

Organic leaders are risk takers. They thrive in contexts that best serve growth through adaption ³⁴. Organic communities are sometimes misrepresented ³⁵ by individuals that state there need be no direction. More accurately, direction is misunderstood in organic communities. Direction is discovered rather than decided upon. When direction is decided instead of discovered there is a tendency to put more value on the goals and tasks at hand than the transformation of the individual. Objectives accomplished in the organization are the gifts and results of emphasis on people as fulfillment of the mission.

Organic leaders have direction to offer followers that emerges through trial and error. This contributes to the liveliness of the communities that are organically led. Organic leaders require organic followers that are fully engaged so that new and revitalizing social resources keep the community alive. Organic followers who fully engage the community will have organic leaders who fully engage their followers. Organic leaders know they exist in a communal narrative and they understand that there is common direction to be discovered and rediscovered in this narrative.

Authenticity shaped by Accountability

Organic leaders are leaders shaped by authenticity. Authenticity is crucial to the sustainability of a leader within their community. It takes a non-judgmental accountability to enable the authenticity of a leader within an organic organization. This authenticity shaped by accountability allows leaders to inspire a creative culture of freedom where individuals are free to take risk and do not suffer persecution for their failings. Their failings contribute to a social knowledge base that helps leaders continually determine the best direction for their social communities.

Authenticity shaped by accountability is also valued of organic leaders because of the experience based structure of organic communities. People that are allowed to think and feel in an organization will naturally want leaders who are real with them. This authenticity is shaped against the mechanistic influences that pervade some organizations. Authenticity of the organic kind is also rooted in servanthood hence the servant leadership style found in this blended leadership model.

Networks shaped by People Webs

Networks shaped by people webs are the result of the first five patterns. The larger organization would resemble many interconnected webs and this is what gives organically led organizations the ability to stretch and fit almost any situation. Organic leaders must have the ability to cultivate organic (natural) processes instead of mechanistic processes in their community to truly engage social resources found throughout their community. This leads to the non-linear shape of the organization thereby opening up an environment to cultivate people-webs.

These social processes flow through a horizontal dyad of followers and leaders that form interconnected people webs. This bends organic communities towards the fluid organization that can adapt to any situation. Organic leaders lead communities in all shapes and sizes but more commonly it is found in smaller organizations suited for a social community mindset to exist.

The organizational structure that organic leaders find themselves in are leader-needy but not leader-heavy. Members of the organization do not a need a leader well versed in the practices of McGregors’s Theory X. ³⁶ Organizational members need leaders who can point them in the right direction and trust that they are capable of productively engaging the organizational mission. The patterns of organic leadership would lead one to believe that members not only strive to accomplish the mission but that they are tightly integrated into the mission because of the narrative atmosphere of community. A community this tight will obviously experience high-stress situations when the mission suffers because when the mission suffers this means the people are suffering as well.

The organic leader is not a central figure in an organization. More accurately the entire group is essential and this is reflective of synergistic ³⁷ group movements. Organic process is about revealing the equality of followers with organic leaders and how all social resources are vital to the health of the communities organic leaders lead. The social structure that results because of these organic processes is a people-web held together by the strands of social relationships and social knowledge that leaders have the ability to catalyze.

Final Thoughts

Organic leadership is incomplete without all six patterns being purposefully practiced by the leader. This blended style of leadership can be found in social organizations, the market place and any other organization that has the capacity to meet the afore mentioned patterns in totality. Organic leadership when recognized correctly is not a new buzz word for old leadership styles because it is emerging as society is emerging.

It is important to know that in each of the patterns there is an independent variable shaping the dependent variable to form the pattern. Understanding the root language of these dependent variables is what truly makes organic leadership a natural type of leadership for the society that it finds itself in.