When we think of a leader, charisma—an individual’s ability to motivate people to follow them, share their vision, and ultimately do what they say—is often at the center of our image. Charismatic, transformational leaders are respected, admired, and even loved. A successful business, however, is about much more than one person, and the danger with an overreliance on an individual is that too much power accumulates at the top of the tree.
No one person has the answer to everything. Without other viewpoints critical thinking diminishes, staff feel powerless to share their views, and danger arises of the culture becoming cultlike rather than collaborative.
Share the load
Collective leadership, where the load is shared and decisions are made through team-based processes, is both an ethical and pragmatic approach. It removes the risk that egos will run unchecked, and supports team motivation and autonomy.
Staff who feel they have a voice and impact on business direction are more invested and creative. This approach also serves to support the leader—as the saying goes, “It’s lonely at the top.”
Good collective leadership looks like this.
- Sharing decision-making: from fostering a general sense that employees are involved, to creating formal structures for making decisions.
- Distributing leadership roles: entrusting decision-making to experts, rather than necessarily those in the most senior positions.
- Building leadership capabilities in others: facilitating opportunities for others to lead and making people feel empowered and safe to do so.
- Creating the conditions for good thinking: coordinating an environment of collaboration.
- Rewarding collective action: attributing achievement to everyone who contributed to a positive outcome, not just those in charge.
This is not to suggest that hierarchy is completely removed. Without any top-down structure, informal leaders will emerge, based on their own charisma, performance, and social standing. While responsibility can and should be spread, a good leader must remain accountable.
A step on from collective leadership is regenerative leadership, where responsibility is extended outside of a business toward the ecological and social systems within which all organizations are embedded; i.e., taking steps to improve local environments and the well-being of both staff and the wider community.
For the good of us all, this is the kind of leadership we should aspire to. Like-minded leaders seek each other out, and badges of ethics, such as becoming B Corp certified or employee owned, can help oil the wheels of success, all while creating a better world for us all to live in.
What we’re describing here is a “relational leader,” someone who understands that leadership is not a solo act, but the task of trusting, collaborating, and encouraging human connection.
Make and break sense
The relational leader’s job is not to have all the answers; it is to create the conditions where a team can make meaning together. People are more likely to commit to a new direction when they have participated in making sense of it.
Sense-making is always a social process, built through conversations and relationships. Sense-giving is the practice of helping others understand what is happening, why it matters, and how to move forward. Sense-breaking can be the most challenging, disrupting an existing understanding that is blocking progress. For example, a major pivot in a market where your business has operated for years.
What’s key is that conversations around sense aren’t subjected to gatekeeping, allowing team members to accept change and make faster, better decisions. Waiting for certainty before communicating can leave people to fill in the gap with their own stories, normally with narratives that are worse than reality.
Encourage difference
In business, different viewpoints and life experiences can enhance operations. While it takes significantly more effort, time and intentional leadership to make a diverse team work well, a wider range of skills, knowledge, and opinions will increase collective capability.
In the relational leadership model, leaders do not simply transmit a message downward; they enable dialogue among conflicting perspectives, navigating ambiguity and creating space for different voices to be heard. All of this supports collective sense-making. The emphasis here is not merely participation but preserving difference.
Teams that embrace difference are more likely to innovate and better understand the needs of different clients. What’s crucial is that people feel psychologically safe to share ideas, challenge authority, and admit mistakes.
Hold space for tension
Making space for difference by encouraging multiple voices is one thing; holding space for the tensions that arise when those voices pull in different directions is something quite different. In a traditional leadership model, equilibrium must be restored as quickly as possible. Tensions are treated with defensiveness and tried and tested solutions are favored that do not challenge the status quo—or the leaders’ authority.
Relational leadership draws on the “paradox mindset,” where competing demands sit alongside each and are given space to exist, rather than shutting down differing viewpoints. With this approach, issues can remain open for discussion without blocking progress; parked for review when time and resources allow.
Potentially, a pathway can be found that honors multiple truths, allowing for greater agility with room for a range of perspectives. It is often these moments of constructive friction that create new thinking.
Leadership for the modern world
In today’s world, where complexity and change are not passing conditions but the permanent backdrop of organizational life, leadership is no longer simply about authority or position. Building relationships, giving people space to excel and be themselves, and taking on a range of viewpoints are the keys to lasting success.