What Is Communityship? Where everyone in a community practices leadership

Many see leadership as the work of individuals. This focus can overlook the power of communities working together. Communityship shifts attention to shared responsibility, where relationships are nurtured, and everyone contributes to the growth and well-being of the whole.

Leadership

Anyone who has a sphere of influence can be considered a leader.

Credit: Daniel Goleman

Let’s start by talking about leadership, something familiar. If you search for leadership, you will find many definitions. Here is mine:

Leadership is the ability of an individual, through social influence, to enlist the support and cooperation of others in achieving common goals and in building and sustaining a community.

Credit: David Gurteen

Put simply, leadership is something a person does. They influence, invite support, and help people work toward shared goals. Most of us have this ability to some degree.

Community

Community is a word that can feel vague or overused. I use it carefully. I define it like this:

A community results from a web of complex and interdependent relationships that form over time among individuals who share common interests, values, and aspirations.

Community members care deeply about one another and work closely together towards a common purpose.

Credit: David Gurteen

Communityship

An enterprise is a community of human beings, not a collection of human resources.

Credit: Henry Mintzberg

What does Henry Mintzberg mean by communityship? We are not talking about one person, but a group of people. In this community, everyone takes responsibility and treats leadership as a practice, not a position of authority. Everyone practises leadership.

Mintzberg on communityship

Henry Mintzberg says this about communityship:

How can you recognize communityship?

That’s easy. You have found it when you walk into an organization and are struck by the energy in the place, the personal commitment of the people and their collective engagement in what they are doing.

These people don’t have to be formally empowered because they are naturally engaged. The organization respects them so they respect it.

They don’t live in mortal fear of being fired en mass because some “leader” hasn’t made his or her numbers.

Imagine an economy made up of such organizations.

Credit: Henry Mintzberg

Isn’t it time to think of our organisations as communities of cooperation, and in so doing put leadership in its place: not gone, but alongside other important social processes.

What should be gone is this magic bullet of the individual as the solution to the world’s problems.

We are the solution to the world’s problems, you and me, all of us, working in concert.

This obsession with leadership is the cause of many of the world’s problems.

And with this, let us get rid of the cult of leadership, striking at least one blow at our increasing obsession with individuality.

Not to create a new cult around distributed leadership, but to recognize that the very use of the word leadership tilts thinking toward the individual and away from the community.

We don’t only need better leadership, we also need less leadership.

Credit: Henry Mintzberg

Further thoughts on communityship

A positive relationship is one in which two people listen, communicate clearly without judgment, respect, and trust each other, as well as support, encourage, and help each other on a practical and emotional level.

Credit: David Gurteen

Communityship, like leadership, is a practice we can choose to adopt. It is a mindset, a belief system, a set of habits and behaviours.

We practise communityship by taking responsibility for the growth and development of the community to which we belong, such as the company we work for.

We establish and nurture positive relationships with other members of the community. Furthermore, we help develop positive relationships between other members.

If you nurture something such as a child or a young plant, you care for it while it grows and develops.

Nurturing a community is not something you do directly, but instead you nurture the relationships between the people within it.

Credit: David Gurteen

If we nurture something, such as a child or a young plant, we care for it while it grows and develops.

Nurturing a community is not something we do directly; instead, we nurture the relationships within it.

So, communityship could be defined like this:

Communityship is a practice where community members take responsibility for that community's growth and development.

They nurture positive relationships between themselves and other members of the community.

Furthermore, they help develop positive relationships between other members.

Credit: David Gurteen

The global community working together to nurture a better world is a prime example of what global communityship could be.

We can choose to see leadership as something we all share. We can take responsibility for the communities we belong to. We can build and maintain positive relationships. We can help others connect. Together, small, consistent actions can strengthen the whole and make a lasting difference.

Resources

• HBR: Rebuilding Companies as Communities
• Article: From leadership to ‘communityship’