Are You a Leader? (Andrea) by X.

How we perceive the role of a leader in organizing impacts not only the outside public’s view of the entire movement, but also the work of all participants in the movement. By definition, a leader carries influence and uses this power to guide others. However, this influence, power, and guidance can be used in different ways, leading to outcomes that affect the sustainability, successes, and strategy of entire organizations and movements. So, if you find yourself in such a role, a little reflection upon how you use it becomes vital to those you work with and what you all want to accomplish.

You can find yourself in a leadership position for various reasons. You were elected. You happened to help to establish an organization. You are really involved. You are getting older, and your group has a lot of new folks joining. Whatever the case may be, whether you feel comfortable as a leader or not, you have a choice in front of you: you can keep the role’s inherent power for yourself or you can share it. And by sharing, I mean taking a step back to listen to and learn from your fellow organizers, new and old. It also involves sharing knowledge and teaching others.

We can all think of people in leadership roles who do not listen, learn, teach, or share. Such leaders tend to take on much of the more meaningful and interesting work of the movement or organization, and the rest of the movement or organization is left to do tasks the leaders don’t want to perform. In I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, Charles Payne explains how Ella Baker felt that the NAACP’s bureaucratic leadership structure in the 1940’s was “leaving most of the huge mass base … little meaningful role in the development of policy and program except raising funds and cheering victories as they came” (1995:87). Such sentiments can be felt throughout contemporary movements and organizations as well, where leaders would never be found doing work like canvassing, making calls, putting up fliers, or doing data entry. Even though such work is essential to the functioning of campaigns and projects, these kinds of leaders would rather leave those tasks to the newcomers rather than working side-by-side with them, showing them what it takes to keep a movement alive and growing. Such leaders leave other participants out of the creation of their movement’s on-going vision when they hold onto it so tightly themselves.

Once again, Charles Payne’s account of the civil rights movement provides us with an example of how tactically unwise these types of leaders can be for a movement. Payne shares with us another poignant observation from Ella Baker:

“I have always felt it was a handicap for oppressed people to depend so largely on a leader, because unfortunately in our culture, the charismatic leader usually becomes a leader because he has found a spot in the public limelight. It usually means that the media made him and the media may undo him. There is also a danger in our culture that, because a person is called upon to give public statements and is acclaimed by the establishment, such a person gets to the point of believing that he is the movement. Such people get so involved with playing the game of being important that they exhaust themselves and their time and they don’t do the actual work of organizing people” (1995:93).

Payne chronicles the experiences of another organizer during that time, Septima Clark, who was also critical of people in these leadership roles, and how they vehemently held onto their positions: “‘I sent a letter to Dr. King asking him not to lead all the marches himself, but instead to develop leaders who could lead their own marches. Dr. King read the letter before the staff. It just tickled them; they just laughed’” (Payne 1995:76).

In order to avoid these trappings, leadership should be envisioned through shared learning and long-term educational outreach. Anyone finding themselves in a leadership role should see that “leadership should be a form of teaching, where the leader’s first responsibility is to develop the leadership potential of others” (Payne 1995:93). Such a “politics of empowerment is likely to be concerned at least as much with the process of individual growth as with short-term tactical goals” (Payne 1995:331). These attitudes towards leadership translate into how movements and movement organizations treat newcomers to their collective, and the tasks that they are given to do. Training and educating a new member in how to take on meaningful work is an important aspect of this vision of leadership.

So, if you find yourself in a leadership position, please take the time to reflect on how your choices and behavior affect the movement around you. What kind of leader are you going to be?

REFERENCE

Payne, Charles. 1995. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.