Where is our leadership focus?
In the Western world, leadership has traditionally been viewed through the lens of the individual. When we think about leadership, we often think about the capabilities of individual leaders: their vision, judgement, resilience, ability to communicate, influence and inspire. Increasingly, we also recognise the importance of the inner capacities that shape how leaders show up: self-awareness, emotional regulation, and the ability to remain present under pressure.
Much of the investment in leadership reflects this. Leadership programs, coaching, assessments and succession planning are typically designed to strengthen individual leaders.
Yet when we look at the challenges organisations are grappling with today, it is fair to say that they often do not sit neatly within the remit of any one leader. They exist across functions, stakeholder groups, leadership teams, organisations and even sectors, requiring leadership that can transcend organisational boundaries, integrate multiple perspectives and mobilise collective action.
Leadership's Blind Spot
For decades, the narrative around leadership has helped organisations better understand what effective individual leadership looks like. As a result, many organisations can clearly articulate the capabilities they value in leaders and invest intentionally in developing them.
Yet we question if the same level of attention has been given to understanding and developing collective leadership: the capacity of a group to lead together with shared purpose, collective intelligence and mutual accountability, creating the conditions for people, teams and organisations to thrive.
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The question is not whether individual leadership matters.
It clearly does.
The question is whether modern organisations have become exceptionally skilled at developing and celebrating individual leaders whilst under investing in and harnessing collective leadership?
Most organisations can readily identify their strongest leaders. Far fewer can describe the strengths and limitations of their collective leadership capacity with the same level of clarity.
- How effectively does leadership operate across teams, functions and leadership layers?
- How do leaders think, decide and respond collectively?
- What is the quality of relationships that shape collective effectiveness?
- What enables leaders to act as a coherent leadership system?
- What gets in the way?
Moving beyond the Individual
As we explore these questions, we find ourselves looking beyond mainstream organisational thinking. Interestingly, some of the oldest wisdom traditions and some of the newest understandings of complexity seem to be pointing in a remarkably similar direction.
Many First Nations cultures have long understood leadership as something held in relationship with community, Country and future generations. Leadership is not simply about authority or individual achievement, it carries responsibilities to listen deeply, honour diverse voices, care for the whole, and make decisions with consideration for those who came before and those yet to come.
Ecology reminds us that healthy ecosystems thrive not because of the strength of one organism but because of the quality of relationships across the whole system.
A healthy forest depends on diversity, continual feedback, adaptation and countless interconnected relationships. Every tree contributes, but no single tree sustains the forest alone.
Systems thinking similarly recognises that organisational outcomes emerge from patterns of interaction rather than isolated actions.
Challenges that appear to belong to individuals are often symptoms of broader structures, relationships or assumptions.
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While these perspectives emerge from different worldviews, each challenges the notion that leadership resides primarily within individuals. Instead, they invite us to see leadership as something that emerges through relationships, shared responsibility and the health of the wider system.
Expanding the Lens - Investing in the Collective
If collective leadership is a capability in its own right, then perhaps organisations need to become as intentional about developing leadership teams, cross-functional relationships and organisational networks as they have been about developing individual leaders.
This may involve developing leaders’ capacity to work across boundaries, navigate competing priorities, integrate diverse perspectives and take shared ownership for outcomes that no single leader, team or function can achieve alone. It may also require consciously creating the conditions for leadership teams to learn, adapt and respond effectively as a collective.
Collective leadership does not replace strong individual leadership, it builds upon it. It recognises that while individuals make important contributions, the greatest organisational outcomes often emerge through the quality of collaboration, shared decision-making, mutual accountability and the capacity of leaders to think and act as part of a larger system.
The Challenge - Holding Both
In practice, collective leadership asks leaders to hold two realities at the same time: to lead their function, team or area of responsibility well, while also contributing to something larger than it.
While this may sound straightforward, in practice it can be one of the more challenging aspects of leadership. The pressures, incentives and accountabilities leaders face often pull their attention towards their part of the system rather than the whole. Limited time, competing priorities and measures of success that are tied to individual or functional performance can make it difficult to sustain a broader organisational perspective.
Yet many of the challenges organisations face today do not respect those boundaries. They cut across functions, stakeholder groups and leadership layers, requiring leaders to notice, engage and influence beyond their specific role, expertise or authority.
So perhaps the question is no longer simply: How do we develop better leaders?
But also: How do we cultivate healthier leadership systems?
Because while individual leadership will always matter, the complexity of today's challenges increasingly invites us to broaden where we look for leadership.
And perhaps collective leadership is not the next evolution of leadership but a return to something we have always known.
Food for Thought
- What aspects of leadership receive the most attention in your organisation today?
- What might become possible if you expanded the lens?
- How well do you understand the strengths of your individual leaders?
- How well do you understand your collective leadership capacity?
Images by Ben Lambert, Fethi Benattallah and Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash
