Episode 18: Shared Leadership: Sharing Power and Stewarding our Commons
with Jamaica Stevens, Jeff Clearwater, Keala Young
How do we share? How do we learn to share? We learn early on in life that sharing is important even if challenging. But we don’t really learn how to share decision-making or leadership or things we hold in common. We have been raised in a very my my my culture. Now we are moving powerfully into a WE culture. This we might say is whole human culture, this is true human being culture.
When we think of leadership we often think of the personal side of it and that’s critical but it’s not the whole story. What is more and more needed is to really understand shared leadership, this is the future, this is what’s needed now more than ever. Shared leadership brings with it other dimensions of our capacities, our awareness, and how we need to play differently. You might think of it as distributed leadership as well. This gets us closer to what we name as collective intelligence. With shared leadership comes greater access to the wholeness and to greater intelligence that can be revealed through increased participation. We know our politics needs better participatory democracy, so we need spaces to practice.
It is this understanding and more that we are exploring in part 2 of this conversation around the ideas of a participatory commons, but we can also talk about it as shared leadership and how it relates to patterns of connection and creativity and shared power. I read many years ago a great quote about the next evolutionary edge for humanity being about sharing power. We might think that’s an exaggeration but when you go deeper, you can see how this is where we find synergy, cooperation, cocreation, and we become more whole. Let’s create communities of practice to become proficient at this. Each of our guests here has incredible wisdom and experience that can be of support to each of us in multiple different kinds of situations.
To more fully explore this, we may realize that we are redefining leadership and to understand that we are often inside of a commons. A commons is our shared resources, those can be physical, the land, finances, time, energy, intention and more. In this kind of space of true participatory leadership, we want to be able to be fluid, we don’t want to be rigid, we aren’t looking at a hierarchical approach, and we don’t want to be flat, where everyone is equal. We want to be like a jazz band, not a symphony, where there is only one conductor.
In order to redefine leadership in this more expanded participatory and shared and creative way, we need to look at what it means to be serving the common good; how do we align around a common goal; how are we serving community together; how do we scale a morally and ethically grounded collective vision? These are some ways that we create the container and structure needed for the work that is ahead of us - this great regeneration of our biosphere and all our social systems. These capacities and explorations we believe are so vital to the times we are in.
Personally, I live near Seattle on Vashon island and this is in the bioregion called Cascadia. There are bioregions all over the world working toward regeneration, bioregions are a pattern in relationship to watersheds. Right now we have a fabulous ‘bioregional activation tour’ happening called Regenerate Cascadia. It’s so exciting - it’s 5 weeks, 14 stops, with 100 plus organizers. This is a commons this glorious bioregion - these land and waters. This bioregion is a commons and for 5 weeks we are exploring some of these questions all up and down the Pacific Northwest Coast.
There is this cultural urgency that’s inviting us to explore the edges of our capacities and to inquire around what capacities are most needed now and to explore what gets in the way of our fully living into our human life potential, this life culture. We know that we need better governance models, and we know that we are all connected and interdependent, and that we are healing the separated mind and worldview and ways of being, because like ubuntu reminds us, which is the wisdom of South Africa, ‘I am because we are.’
This is part 2 of a very juicy and rich conversation with Jamaica Stevens, Keala Young, Jeff Clearwater and myself. I love how our dialogue itself is very much akin to being in a jazz band. We are behaving like a thriving ecosystem, like life, fluid, supportive, deeply engaged and caring. We are sharing our wisdom through our experiences and ultimately exploring what is this pattern language for groups, for collectives around stewardship and decision making when we recognize we live inside a commons on so many levels. How do we resolve conflict and how do we stay in a beautiful right relationship with the patterns of life. Finding harmony and connection and peace within and among. We are leaving behind power over and standing in the wonderful architecture of power with and among.
I hope you enjoy this conversation and please check out part 1 of this exploration. I invite you to reflect as you are listening to where this is applicable in your own life, and please reach out with any questions or feedback. If inspired, please share with others and subscribe from either my website or youtube. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.
Bios
Jamaica Stevens is the Co-Founder of Open Future Coalition, developing social, technological, and economic tools for systemic change. She is Author of “ReInhabiting the Village: CoCreating our Future”, focused on village ethics and regenerative principles for social transformation and ecological restoration and a consultant and designer with VillageLab. As a social architect, facilitator, storyteller, and seasoned event producer, she leverages cooperative processes, living systems principles, and transformative convenings to empower people, communities, and organizations to THRIVE as social ecosystems integrated as a part of a Living System. Like a mycorrhizal function in an ecosystem, Jamaica strategically connects nodes within networks, weaving webs of reciprocal value, strengthening the capacity for coordinating global movements of locally based Planetary Solutions.
https:/openfuturecoalition.org
Jeff Clearwater
A. Keala Young
Keala is a whole systems designer and regenerative practitioner with a background in the healing arts, pattern language and group facilitation.
Keala is a co-founder of Atlan Community near the Columbia River Gorge in Central Cascadia and serves as a Network Steward Circle member and Regional Liaison to the Global Ecovillage Network representing North America.
Keala is a co-steward of multiple emergent Participatory Commons explorations including with the Collaborative Technology Alliance.