Reflection Paper | Distributed Leadership

Leadership is always a difficult topic to understand. I used to be a member of a team that designed a leadership development program for a company in Thailand. At that time, it seemed like each team member did not clearly understand what leadership was and why it was so important that we should spend a lot of money on it. Once we made a consensus on the scope and definition of leadership, a new question emerged. Who should be the target group for this program; top executives, middle management or all employees across the organization? People still stick to the traditional approach where power and authority are centralized. But what’s wrong with centralization?

Through the past six years of my career in human resource development and organizational development, I have seen a lot of employees, especially senior ones, afraid of stepping out of their own comfort zone and with no aspiration for improvement. No one is to blame but the system. It is the system that prevents people at the bottom level of an organization from being creative and having self-confidence. To solve this problem, we need to refurbish our old beliefs and conventional organizational structure. Leadership should be distributed to employees at all levels of the organization.

Nevertheless, it is hard to break old habits. I have a lot of questions in my mind that the workshop did not answer. Does Distributed Leadership create a shift of power? If so, will top management feel secure to delegate their power? As a general rule, more power or more authority comes with more responsibility. Will people, who have been in a comfort zone for most of their working lives, accept that?

To be honest, I expected to learn more regarding the implementation of a Distributed Leadership concept within an organization, especially how to make top management buy-in. I see a lot of growth and learning opportunities in several companies which have been locked up for many years. Distributed leadership might be the key that can unlock those opportunities by letting people show their real potential and expose their creativity. The workshop gave a clear picture of how to develop leadership in oneself but did not touch as thoroughly as it could have on helping others realize their leadership potential.

Personally, one of the most rewarding aspects of the workshop was the opportunity to reflect about myself, my vision and my goals. I rarely have the chance to sit down quietly and listen to my inner-self. To do so made me feel revitalized and fresh again.

In sum, I think Distributed Leadership is a class that all MBA students should take. MBA often focuses us too much on hard skills but I personally believe that soft skills are far more important in the long run.

“The greatest leader isn’t necessarily the one who does the greatest things. The greatest leader is the one who gets the people to do the greatest things.” – Ronald Reagan