Rethinking community leadership: A skill to master

Leadership can take several familiar forms manifesting in the context of electoral politics and organisational hierarchies. The purpose of leadership is to represent groups of people and get their voices heard. Position-centric models of leadership miss having their ear to the ground enabling responses to the most immediate and relevant challenges and phenomena faced by the group they represent and lead. A leadership model that invests in hierarchy and distance ends up being detached from the realities where it is supposed to make a change. An inside-out model of leadership, originating from within the community, thus, is crucial in listening and dealing with problems promptly, thereby contributing to the immediate development of the community.

Leadership is vital for keeping people motivated and giving direction to groups, it serves and should not simply be imagined from existing perspectives of governance and management. Top-down representative structures engage and lose themselves in administration instead of relating with and responding to the group represented. Community leadership offers a diametrically opposed alternative to such structures. An example of community leadership is farmer unions rallying for the rights and urgent needs of farmers, despite ministries dedicated to welfare of agricultural workers. Since the former is led by farmers themselves and mobilizes a community of farmers at a grassroots level, it does not overlook their needs and aspirations.

Community leaders rise from the social and professional groups they represent. They rely on informal ties, interpersonal communication and local and direct involvement. Instead of appointment or competition, community leaders establish themselves through membership in the community, emotional connections with other members and shared histories and aims. They voice the vision of the community and keep its representation honest and genuine. They provide direction to the community, building on its most immediate interests and differ from the usual leadership structures where the emphasis is on functional or divisional split.

Community leadership can enable a swift realization of goals and objectives, a community can achieve.

When the focus shifts from managing the community from outside, internal perspectives will ensure optimization of resources held by the community while realizing exciting and beneficial possibilities. Community leaders can pave the way for development and progress, that is inclusive and instantly resonates with those involved. Communities are all about shared emotions and goals. Therefore, it is suitable that the leaders share the imagination, expectations and aims of the community.

Leadership often involves many personal benefits for leaders such as power and prestige. However, when leaders represent communities, they are part of, it is undoubtedly a more intimate engagement. There might be personal benefits in leading, but they do not become the central concern because how one leads directly impacts groups one is part of.

This rooted engagement inevitably ensures that the stakes for the target group and the leader are not very different. Therefore, leaders are geared to act in the interest of the community to suit their interests as well.

Community leadership has better avenues for accountability. If the leader is a member of the immediate social circles in the community, he/she/they can be asked questions directly and responses can be sought with relative ease. This differs from usual scenarios where the leader remains distant, formidable and hard to approach. Community leadership is informal, rooted and less hierarchical.

This inside-out approach also ensures that the values, interests and aspirations of the community are not compromised for the sake of imposed ideas of development. Such leadership endeavours are not aimed to create financial profits but are dedicated to sustaining the community and the things it cherishes. A social imperative is prioritized over the ebbs and flows of the market and therefore, representation is both genuine and consequential.

Community leaders have the ability to spearhead innovations that only the represented community can offer. Cultures have their particular and distinct ways of responding to the world. Community leaders can focus on these unique ways to offer radically new things to the world. An example would be guilds and unions of artisans who preserve the work done by members and ensure that its uniqueness is promoted. Leadership arising out of a specific cultural domain protects it against appropriation. It ensures that the products of the culture remain distinctive, vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

Communities also employ consistent conversation and negotiations among members. Thus, community leadership is not likely to stagnate, as it makes space for different voices. It is thus, more open to discussion, reform and change, compared to conventional leadership models. As the community evolves and changes, the leadership also evolves, because it happens to be in tune with the internal affairs of the group.

Empirical findings also show the effectiveness of community leadership. In a May 2020 media report, Adam Auerbach shares his research on community leadership in India's slum settlements. He notes that 108 out of the 111 settlements he surveyed had acknowledged slum leaders. In the same article, he includes a statement by a Jaipur slum leader, who details how slum leaders in the settlement helped residents secure food and spread awareness about social distancing in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. An article in November, detailed how a leader in a resident's welfare association in Bengaluru sensitized residents against burning crackers and urged them to think of infected people and people in quarantine.

(The author is Founder, Upsurge Global, and Senior Advisor, Telangana State Innovation Cell)