17 - Leadership in community work

Summary

Introduction

Our starting point in this chapter is a question: who are the leaders when we consider community work practice; and this is followed by a second important question: where are they? We argue that they are at all levels in our work. Every community worker provides a leadership role at some level and function of society and the organisation. Leadership as a subject and a focus is important in the challenging world of tackling poverty, of seeking social justice and of harnessing learning to effect change.

We would argue that such a world of practice requires courage and values in action and that leadership needs to be seen, at all levels, to succeed; essentially, in public and voluntary sector organisations, in higher and further education institutions, in government, in community-based endeavours. Some of the most enduring and admirable leadership qualities encountered by the authors have been in community-based practice and by those in voluntary roles.

Transformational leadership

‘Leadership shows up at all these different levels, and in some cases you are the leader; in another case, somebody else is. I had this wonderful mentor and he said “You know, if you’re going on a trek but if you don't know how to read a map, you’re going to talk to the guy with a map behind you, and that person's going to become the leader. And then when it comes time to eat, the person who can cook is going to be the person who takes the lead”. So, this idea of always kind of moving to the head of the line, depending on what was needed. So, leadership has to do with what the challenge is, you know?’ (Lynn Clark, 2022, Focus Group)

This focus group quotation illustrates how we all have the potential to take the lead at different times in our career. The authors believe that many of the best leaders see themselves not as experts but as facilitators who can motivate others and develop talent within a team. This resonates with the concept of transformational leadership, a leadership approach defined by James MacGregor Burns in 1978.