Most organizations and institutions are designed around a military-style “chain of command” structure that places authority atop a pyramid-shaped hierarchy. This is a relic from a time when leaders were assumed to be superior to the rest of us. That is no longer believable.
We have been taught that electing the leaders who sit atop these hierarchies is the ideal form of governance. That is a myth that preserves hierarchies. Democracy always results in mob rule, where majorities can oppress minorities, whose ideas and needs can be ignored until the revolt.
Hierarchies are inherently unequal, and inequalities persist by design in hierarchal groups and societies. People and movements that might upset the hierarchical order are systematically suppressed. Potential changemakers are systematically deterred from obtaining the experience, information, resources, and confidence they need to advocate for themselves and their communities.
Democracy may seem appealing when contrasted with autocracy. But there is no universal law that says other people must rule over us at all, despite the religious and political mythologies that have been handed down over the past ten thousand years. This is why, after abolishing their government, the American founders spoke of individual rights and liberty. It is why they said governments only exist to protect those rights and liberties. It is why they spoke of the consent of the governed.
All leaders are human, and all humans are fallible, so failures of leadership are inevitable. Because traditional models of leadership make many depend upon a few, many suffer because of a few failures. One person makes a mistake and armies are defeated, people’s needs go unmet, and entire communities are brought to shame.
This is why the leadership of today and tomorrow shouldn’t look like military commanders, politicians, business leaders, or pop culture icons. It should look like single moms, high school dropouts, and quiet people with a lot to say. It should look like non-binary, formerly incarcerated, and undocumented people. Like first generation students and privileged people who disappoint their parents. Leadership should be people whose voices have been silenced coming together to decide the path forward.
We Are All Leaders, even if we have been led to believe we are not. No one should have more control over our lives than us. To the extent we feel in control of our own lives, we will advocate for ourselves. Self-advocacy is a form of resistance to outside authority that doesn’t care about us or our communities. We are being leaders when we advocate for ourselves, because like our identities, our interests intersect. When we break our own chains, we often set others free as well.
We need leaders, but we don’t need kings, bosses, or idols. Movements like Occupy Wallstreet, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo show the promise of non-hierarchical leadership. Often called leaderless movements, they are actually leaderful. Everyone who showed up, shared information, or told their story helped change the world by changing the hearts and minds of millions.
These actions are often minimized, but changing hearts and minds has been a central strategy of the U.S. military for decades because it is usually more effective than violence. The people with guns, after all, must decide where to point them.
Leaderless/leaderful movements are also difficult to defeat. Leaders can be killed or imprisoned by those who oppose change, but this becomes impossible when a movement depends on many people thinking and acting independently, united only by shared interests and ideas.
The leadership of today and tomorrow, therefore, should not be a hierarchy. It should be a circle, with each of us at the center of our own sphere of influence. Our circles overlap, and they can grow or shrink.
Not everyone has the knowledge, skills, or will to be Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, or Malcolm X. But everyone can start a book club, volunteer their time to support a cause they believe in, or share social media content about things that matters to them. All of these and a thousand more are acts of leadership with revolutionary potential.
We change the world by acting. We may never know the impact of our actions, but every action is impactful.
Where do we go from here? As you'll hear us say again and again, we don't know. WAAL is a group for people with more questions than answers about leadership. It’s not a “how to” group; it’s a place where we ask “How?”
The lessons of history mostly teach us what doesn’t work. Our goal is to imagine something that does. We need a new revolution. An intellectual and relational revolution. One where we imagine and fight for new ways to live together that don’t require some of us to submit to others.
The revolutions that ushered in the modern world, where more people than ever have a say in how our government works, were preceded by the Enlightenment, when people thought, wrote, and talked about the ideas our governments were formed around.
We hope you’ll join us as we explore the nature and practice of leadership together, considering what we learn against the backdrop of the rest of our lives...and against the backdrop of humanity across time and around the world.
History is written by victors, but it is made by everyone, one way or the other. The names of those who pour out their lives for things they believed in are mostly forgotten, along with the names of those who never tried. But together they are the stream that carries the past into the present. It is into this stream that WAAL calls us to pour out our own lives.