Enabling Leadership: Just Cycling Along. CRLRA Discussion Paper.

Conventional notions of leadership have focused on the leader alone rather than on the situation that leaders must enable. The common threads to successful rural community development in Australia over the last few decades lie in the way the community develops its stores of social capital, which is based on trust, shared values, networks, and collective action. Models of leadership should refocus on situations that demand a leadership of enablement, rather than on any single person presumed to somehow "conduct" the leadership process from beginning to end. This refocusing provides an opportunity to include and value a wider group of people rather than just one "leader." Qualities of interactive processes that foster this leadership of enablement include building internal networks; building links between internal and external networks; building a history of shared experiences and understandings; building shared visions; building shared communication; and building each other's self-confidence. The main role of leaders under these circumstances is developing trust. Tools for community builders include relationship building, collaborative problem solving, and situational analysis. The results of situational analysis can be used to specify the leadership structure for the situation, and local solutions can be woven from the diverse and complementary threads of the overall community fabric. Power is distributed along with the leadership, not vested in one authority figure. An example describes how a community's situation defined its leadership needs during the development of a vocational skills center. (TD)