How to Manage Networks: Managing Leadership

In many ways, this question gets to the heart of what that means in practice to work together within a network. Our default approach should always be to ensure inclusive decision-making processes. However, that doesn’t mean that everybody has to be involved with every single decision. The purpose of network infrastructure – i.e. the structural design and components of the network including externally visible structures and processes for governance, member engagement, project implementation, management and administration, etc. – is to help us with these types of challenges. However formal or informal your network might be, putting in place some structures and processes for clear and efficient decision-making is often a good idea. For example, networks often have some type of governing body that is typically representative of the network and is vested with responsibility for making high-level decisions on behalf of the network. Furthermore, you can distinguish between different types of decisions that can be made via different groups or processes. Some decisions may be clearly within the purview of some subset of members, for example, where a task force, working group, or other subgroup makes decisions about certain activities or where staff make certain types of management decisions. Different structures and processes can be developed for different needs while being open and transparent with the rest of the network about how and, importantly, why things are done that way. Being inclusive requires engaging and consulting members but it can also mean engaging and consulting members to design the structures and processes by which decisions will be made rather than engaging and consulting them for each and every decision.

One of the ways in which we can understand leadership - which is one of the seven network capacities - is to look at formal versus informal leadership and the spectrum therein. We can see more formal leadership within a network as specific roles that have been defined as leadership, such as the formal leadership roles for governance and management of the network. This might be embodied in a governing body, such as a Board with a Board Chair, and include staff, like a Director or Executive Director. These are formal leadership roles that are making decisions for and guiding the network. These formal roles can also be decentralized across the network via structures like the leadership councils that you mention. Different structures for organizing members can include formal leadership roles, such as working groups that are formalized with chairs or co-chairs.

You will also have informal leadership that is dispersed across the network. Part of the idea of a network is that it functions horizontally, not vertically. A network isn’t top-down and directive. A network provides spaces where members can take the initiative and self-organize, allowing ideas and action to emerge organically. Not all new ideas will, for example, come through a formal channel like a governing body. This informal bubbling up of ideas is also leadership -- and formal leaders should foster this informal leadership by ensuring engagement, participation, and equity across members.

As per your question, these are two different things. We refer to the network itself taking a leadership role in its field as thought leadership and field-building. In Collective Mind’s diagnostic framework for understanding networks, this falls under the component of network functions, or the activities that a network undertakes to achieve its Shared Purpose. Thought leadership is about spearheading technical or policy progress in service of addressing the problem or issue that is central to the network’s vision and mission.

Network leadership is leadership for the network itself. It is about guiding, directing, and facilitating the network and its members. Network leadership is first about the types of leadership that exist within the network in terms of roles and responsibilities. Leadership in a network will range from formal to informal, from people in specific roles tasked with certain responsibilities - such as a governing body or the most senior person on a network’s staff - to members themselves informally taking on leadership by, for example, connecting members or bringing new members in, mobilizing resources on behalf of the network, taking the initiative to come up with new ideas and organize members to take them on and develop them further.

Network leadership is also about the style and approaches of leadership that are most appropriate within a network and support its effectiveness and impact. Leadership within a network is radically different from the leadership styles and approaches we see in traditional organizations. Leadership in a network does not control and command; it convenes, facilitates, and coordinates. It is about fostering interactions, connections, and relationships in order to define and solve problems collaboratively and collectively. There is no “leader as hero” in a network - there is only the “we” that does the hard work of collaborating.