The Community Course
Part 2 - Community Design
Part  1   2   3   4      Chapter 10  11  12  13  14

13. Community Leadership

Unpaid Leadership
Most writings on community organization assume that funds and professional workers are available to supply paid health officers, paid recreation managers, paid music program directors, etc.  In small communities this very often is not the case. Sometimes county, state, or national funds may be supplied for specific purposes, but in general if the small community is to have a well-proportioned development, that must come about by the voluntary, unpaid work of members of the community.

Especially for the leaders, such voluntary work must be more than occas­ional short undertakings. Some community members must become at least amateur ex­perts and specialists in their fields. One may become expert in leading meetings and guiding discussions.  Such a person will not depend on common sense alone. He will find out what the ablest men have thought and written about the subject of leadership. He will read such books as The Art of Leadership, by Ordway Tead, Sanderson’s  Leadership for Rural Life, Follett's The New State or her Creative Experience, and Walser's The Art of Conference.  Also, such a person will take occasion to attend meetings directed by skilled leaders, and will carefully observe their methods.

Good Community Leadership
Competent, prepared leadership is necessary for good community development. Slavson, in the book Creative Group Education, remarked, “Common observation indicates that a group of average type, without any leadership or with inadequate leadership, degenerates into a destructive or petty-tyrannical group, with the stronger members as the tyrants." (p.26)  In many communities long experience of living together, and the carryover of wise leadership from the past, has resulted in mutual respect and good manners which prevents this petty tyranny, or conflicts between would-be petty tyrants.  In some communities good leadership in the family (called good breeding) and good community leadership have made such an impression that the work of the community gets done with very little evidence of personal dominance.

Quality over Quantity
If a few people in a community will qualify themselves to be chairpersons of meetings and leaders in community affairs they can raise leadership and habits of cooperation in their community to new levels.  A vast amount of time can be saved at meetings; there can be greater order, promptness, efficiency, and good will in getting things done.  As young people learn the methods of such leaders, the community in the course of years may produce business leaders and executives.  In a relatively small business in a certain American city the founder and owner of the busi­ness trained his assistants so thoroughly in the art of administration and management that as the years passed his company supplied more chief executives to large American corporations than did probably any great American corporation during the same period.  Any small community in which a few persons will thoroughly master the art of democratic leadership may be making a very great contribution to that commun­ity and to the country.

Leadership in a community does not require striking personality or prominent position.  In the labor union movement some of the most effective leaders are mechanics or office clerks or other people in everyday positions.  Any reasonably intelligent person can take any little committee chairpersonship as his or her experimental laboratory, and by reading up on methods of leadership, correcting his or her own faults, observing good leaders when he or she has opportunity, and by keeping at his or her little committee job until he has done it thoroughly and well, can make himself or herself into a more efficient leader than most people who now handle small community affairs.

Spirit of Leadership
Similarly in various other special fields individuals may become special­ists, experts, and qualified leaders. Joseph K. Hart, in his Community Organization, wrote, “Every human being needs some experience in leadership. This is not only necessary; it is becoming definitely possible.” (P. 210)

Sanderson in Leadership for Rural Life wrote: (P.49)

"Not infrequently persons of ordinary ability, who lack self-confidence, and who have no experience as leaders, when they are encouraged to assume positions of leadership and are given some concrete help or training for it, develop into excellent leaders for specific groups. . . . they become excellent leaders because of their devotion to a cause in which they were sufficiently interested to try to learn how they might help in its advancement."

“On the other hand, there are many persons of undoubted ability who seem to have all the qualifications for leadership, but who are unwill­ing to assume its responsibilities, or who are so self-centered that groups will not trust them as leaders.”

Motivation for Leadership
Very often a community is greatly harmed by an itch for leadership which results in competition and hard feeling, and which may undermine the effectiveness of community action.  It is not a craving for recognition, position, authority or dominance that is helpful, but a live interest in some work which needs to be done, a willingness to take the trouble to understand the problem, and willingness to assume the responsibility and the hard work of getting it done.

Getting Qualified
By the time one has thoroughly qualified himself or herself to get a small piece of work done well, the way generally will open for more important work.  In a small community a young woman, who has qualified herself to lead a community music program, found the local program firmly in the hands of an older person who had less useful qualifications.  The young woman gathered some young people of high school age who were receiving little attention in the community, and within a year or two had made this group the center of the young life of the community, in addition to creating a well-trained musical group.  When opportunity came for her to take over the community music program she hesitated to assume a responsibility which would interfere with work that had come to be both useful and pleasant.

Ordway Tead, in his book The Art of Leadership remarked very truly, “The opportunity to lead fairly shouts aloud for its chance in every organization and institution which brings the citizens of a democratic community together.  For in every area of action people are seeking to fulfill themselves. They want deeply to rise above a nominal or legal equality to an assertion of their own intrinsic superiorities of capacity and achievement.  But to do this they have to be led. They have to be brought into effective group relationships which are certainly not spontaneous, but the creation of those in the vanguard.” (P.268)

Beginnings of Democracy
Democracy is one of the hardest lessons humanity has to learn.  It must begin in the home.  Husband and wife must be partners, each one the leader in some matters and the follower in others.  Children should share in responsibilities to the full extent that they are able, for otherwise they will never be truly democratic, but will either become dictators, or people seeking someone to manage them. In the same way, community responsibility must be widely distributed and widely shared if community democracy is to be a reality. Unless there is democracy in the community there will be little in the nation.

Transitioning to Democracy
The habits of feudalism and autocracy, which were so deeply imbedded in the old world, were not escaped in the settlement of America. The new world could not have lived comfortably without those old habits, because the new habits of democracy had not yet fully developed.  The transition to democracy, which is a very difficult process, can best take place in the small community where it already has roots from the distant, pre-feudal past.  Joseph K. Hart, in his Community Organization, pictures the difficulty of this transition:  (pp. 207-209) 

“Democracy needs a completely new organization of the technique of administration, which will be consistent with the factors and the aims which a democratic community seeks to achieve. Democracy requires leadership. Autocratic bossing of the job is not real leadership. It may be ‘executive ability' but if so it is an ability to 'execute' the aspirations of democracy, to suppress them, and discourage and destroy them, rather than to lead them. All too long democracy has had to fight against these unsympathetic attitudes of the typical administrator. One phase of the work of the deliberative community council should be the more complete analysis of the kind of leadership and administration which the democratic community must have."

 “The most real difficulty in our present world-unrest arises out of the fact that our community interests, international, national and local, are still largely dominated by 'executives' who have not the slightest comprehension of the suppressed energies they are dealing with or the ideal demands toward which those energies are aspiring. The industrial leader, the political boss, the typical educator, the traditional theologian - all bear the taint of this lack of democracy. They are all impatient of deliberation, and of the vague longings of the suppressed multitudes. The more definitely they urge their programs upon present conditions, however, the more they alienate and disaffect those whom they are supposed to lead.”

“The first task of the democratic leader should be to become really acquainted with the forces and energies that he is to lead. This involves going far below the conventional surface of things. Democracy demands that every normal individual shall be taken into account and the community leader must be one who can do this democratic accounting. He must be able to help those long-lost forces and energies recover from their old repressions and discover their capacity to express themselves in order that a program or policy for the community shall actually come out of the vital life of that community.”

The democratically minded leader in the community will find that he cannot always wait for results until he has educated his or her people in the spirit of democratic responsibility. He or she will find many of them inert, disinterested - concerned with their own affairs.   Men and women who are competent in their own fields see the fundamental social economy of giving a leader full authority in a field where he or she is competent. Too much deliberation and participation may wreck a program as surely as too little.

Managing Community Affairs
No universal rules can be made for the democratic management of community affairs.  Sometimes a program of necessary work may be delayed or killed by waiting too long on democratic participation. Sometimes it is necessary for the community leader to “take the bit in his teeth,” and get the job done in a somewhat autocratic manner. Sometimes the seemingly quick results of such methods do not last, or are not effective, because the people have not had enough part in the undertaking to become interested, because they have not been educated to carry it on, because they resent the autocratic methods used, or because the leader, in his haste to get results, has failed to understand the problem as some of the people did who seemed to be obstructing his program.  In choosing his or her methods the leader must be guided by his or her common sense, by the best counsel available, by a willingness to learn and to change his or her opinion, and by persistence and firmness against discouragement or blind opposition. He or she should be on guard constantly against a desire to be conspicuous, to dominate, to gain recognition and power. His or her aim should be to learn what the community needs and how he or she can be most helpful in meeting these needs. He or she will go as far as possible toward making himself or herself unnecessary or unimportant by helping his or her associates to develop the capacity to carry on without him or her.  This will free time and attention for pioneering, if he or she has it inside.