Unplugged: New Metaphors for Leadership

Metaphors are another way to see how our conscious or unconscious beliefs shape our thinking and behavior.  The questions at the end of this blog help us understand how we were framing the old metaphors, and how to use new metaphors within our modern, networked, unplugged environments to pull us closer toward true living systems leadership. 

Unplugged Leadership

Some of us remember having phones plugged into a wall or a time when computers needed to be linked with a cord to work. These images reflect the type of leadership we associate with command and control. People receiving a directive needed to be “attached” to their leader to know what to do.

Today, our phones and computers don’t need to be plugged in. We can connect anytime, from almost anywhere.  Members are self-organized so they can make decisions and initiate actions that serve the whole organization without being directed every step of the way by positional leaders.  This powers more equitable and collaborative relationships.

Distributive leadership reflects the dynamics of an unplugged, wireless metaphor since it’s distributed throughout all levels of the organization. Using this metaphor we unplug from positional leadership and look for leadership behavior throughout the organization, not just at the top. And we can look for more ways to manifest this type of collaborative leadership. 

Networked Leadership

Hierarchical leadership recalls a top-down, pyramid image comprised of leaders, managers, and less skilled labor.   Using a networked metaphor, however,  assumes that an organization is filled with connections and open systems of influence. It’s a metaphor for the type of leadership that relies on relationships –  influencing, learning, and organizing based on interdependence.

In a networked metaphor, positional authority gives way to authentic engagement with bottom-up innovation and self-organization collaborating with strategic direction and alignment. Software companies tend to have these networked cultures because innovation and learning flow through relationships, but any organizations whose competitive edge is driven by knowledge and innovation can benefit from strengthening their networked leadership skills. 

Living System Leadership

The living systems metaphor recognizes humans as living entities with emotion, consciousness, and complexity. Since humans make up organizations, organizations are also living systems whose dynamics are more like those we see in nature than those we see in machines. If we take the idea of organizations as living systems to the next level, we would be asking “what is my organization becoming?” and “how can I help my organization continue to evolve and discover its purpose?”

The traditional fusion of ego and positional leadership reflects thinking that an organization only exists to serve the individual leader and their wants or needs. The shift to thinking of organizations as alive with consciousness and purpose has huge implications for our thinking and our leadership behavior.

Reframing Questions for New Leadership Thinking

Building on these new metaphors, new leadership questions arise. Below is a table that reframes the principle leadership question, strategies, and challenges based on emergent, modern metaphors vs traditional systems frameworks.

Thinking of leadership as wireless, networked, and a living dynamic helps us see how traditional leadership metaphors have shaped the way we lead and the assumptions we make about our organizations. Creating and testing new metaphors for leadership takes our thinking in new directions as we work through the disruptions of our time.