TLG: "When love starts happening, you can melt the snow."

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Photo Credit: Craig Neal

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

"When love starts happening, you can melt the snow." -David Sibbet

The Artistry of Leadership: The Role of Design, Participation & Community. Heartfelt thanks to David and the TLG community for a remarkable session last Friday. Every part of the morning was thoughtful (Welcome from Constance, Lori's poem: Download UnPopularMountain-TLG.pdf, Pam's "Report from the Field," and, last but not least, David's remarks).

David commented that the title of the TLG had been "working" him. "Am I an artist? I was thinking I was a designer. And, what is the participation part? What is the leadership part? What has been coming up for me around those two: I have a problem with the term "leadership"...

Instead of leadership (an individual endeavor), we need to prepare people for governance (a community endeavor). It is an assumption that it is a group activity—you govern with circles and committees. We have mental models about things we don’t understand, about how things connect. Being organized is about people sharing ideas about how things connect."

Why is participation and community a true part of leadership? For a leader to not to involve people is to exclude the richest part of being in an organization. The deep artistry is making these things—systems and operating systems—explicit so that people know how to engage and contribute.

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