The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World. Revolutionize your leadership style with ‘Dare to Un-Lead’, a groundbreaking book that challenges conventional hierarchies and empowers collaborative success.

Dive deeper into the art of relational leadership; discover how ‘Dare to Un-Lead’ can transform your approach to leadership.

Genres

Business, Leadership, Management, Organizational Development, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Strategy, Human Resources, Corporate Culture

‘Dare to Un-Lead’ by Celine Schillinger advocates for a shift from traditional top-down leadership to a more relational, inclusive approach. It emphasizes the importance of liberty, equality, and community in contemporary organizations, proposing a model that encourages collective leadership and empowerment.

Review

The book is a thought-provoking read that offers a fresh perspective on leadership. Schillinger’s insights are backed by her extensive experience and deep analysis, making a compelling case for the need to reinvent leadership practices. The book is particularly relevant in a post-pandemic world where traditional structures are being questioned, and there’s a greater emphasis on equality and community in the workplace.

Recommendation

Author Céline Schillinger argues that traditional, top-down leadership now must evolve into a “collective capacity” that enables all workers to do their best and fosters cooperation and co-creation. This capacity, says Schillinger, is essential for tackling the immense challenges institutions from firms to nations face today, including global warming, threats to democracy and the fragmentation of the world. Leaders must share power, be open to changing their minds, and participate in conversational, open engagement with their employees. She acknowledges that achieving a more egalitarian workplace will require new behaviors, mindsets and skills from everyone, not only leaders.

Take-Aways

• Céline Schillinger’s love of diversity, equity and inclusiveness spurred her corporate activism.
• Self-empowerment, interpersonal connections and digital networks enable change.
• Traditional leadership and top-down management don’t work in the new world.
• Modern leaders leverage social influence to achieve shared goals.
• “Engagement leadership” inspires agency and self-motivation.
• Build employee engagement, empowerment and ownership through “liberty, equality and fraternity.”

Summary

Céline Schillinger’s love of diversity, equity and inclusiveness spurred her corporate activism.

After ten years as an entrepreneur, Céline Schillinger joined the large French pharmaceutical company, Sanofi, where she learned about the corporate world’s processes, hierarchy, and more. Today Schillinger works bring the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity to corporate life and leadership.

“Bad rebels tend to complain, break rules and alienate, while good rebels are more likely to create, change rules and attract.”

At Sanofi, Schillinger felt suffocated by a lack of diversity and an oppressive leadership mode, male-dominated at all levels of power. In 2010, she emailed the CEO to advocate diversity within the company. This email, which she shared with three colleagues, spread through the workforce, giving Schillinger her first real appreciation of the power of activism and networks.

She and her colleagues decided to contribute to the organization’s strategy rather than fight against it. They mobilized people across hierarchical and functional barriers and connected them with a common purpose. This group of men and women enabled diversity at Sanofi.

Until Schillinger, Sanofi had no experience with employee activism or group movements, yet this coalition eventually grew to 2,500 people in 50 countries and spread beyond the corporation itself.

Self-empowerment, connection and digital networks enable change.

Schillinger’s experiences at Sanofi led her to mobilize other groups for employee empowerment, equitable workplace practices and other causes. For example, she used social network tools to lead the organization of a community (breakdengue.org) that – in less than a year – engaged 250,000 volunteers to work to prevent mosquito-borne Dengue Fever.

Schillinger then moved to Boston to take on a new role as Sanofi’s Head of Quality Innovation and Engagement and to work alongside John Kotter, a leadership and change expert.

“Agency can be defined as the ‘independent ability to act according to one’s own will’.”

Despite spending millions of dollars and hiring multiple consultants over the course of 15 years, Sanofi had made little progress toward equitable employment practices. The corporation’s investments and efforts had not altered the relationship patterns inside the company. Its old system prevailed; top-down knowledge and expertise either did not flow downward to employees or flowed only reluctantly. The company embraced the fantasy that people will adopt a new approach, execute it and change to adapt to it just by being told to do so. Bringing about real change takes a lot more than that.

Over time, Schillinger came to understand that people seek meaning, not mandates. When executives tell a trained professional what to do, they provoke resistance. Instead, leaders can drive positive change by harnessing the power of each person’s sense of responsibility and individual agency. Such a change includes a shift from traditional command-and-control leadership to a system that emphasizes employee co-creation and autonomy.

Individuals who have agency in their work possess certain qualities, in particular, they have a growth mindset, as defined by professor and Mindset author Carol Dweck. While people with fixed mindsets feel stuck, those with growth mindsets believe they can change, so they work steadily to improve their abilities. They view challenges as opportunities for growth.

Traditional leadership and top-down management don’t work in the 21st century.

Life and work in the 21st century bear little resemblance to the eras of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford. Their obsolete top-down management style and assembly-line thinking contribute to employees’ mounting discontent about decision-making, corporate governance, global challenges and the way society functions.

“Some describe this distressed world in terms of VUCA, a US Army War College acronym that means ‘Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.’ Others, such as [futurist and author] Jamais Cascio, find the term obsolete, referring instead to ‘an age of chaos’ in which the world is BANI, or ‘Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear and Incomprehensible’.”

Many organizations still try to resolve problems with outdated, hierarchical governance. When they confront a problem, they appoint a special team of knowledgeable people to tackle the issue; bring in experts and leaders; secure sponsors and resources; and engage in extensive planning, analysis and meetings. This special team works in a silo as the rest of the organization goes about its usual business and lives with the ongoing problem. Eventually, the team produces a solution its members expect the rest of the organization to adopt having had no input or say in the matter.

Imposing such initiatives on your workforce without first enlisting their participation results in low engagement and lower commitment. As a result, organizations struggle with efficiency and performance – and leaders wonder why. Change initiatives fail, in large part because they usually don’t suit workers who had no hand in their creation and thus, feel no sense of ownership. People value what they create. When you force people to do things your way, they’ll resent you and reject your approach.

Modern leaders leverage social influence to achieve shared goals.

Schillinger’s work with a European airline provides an inspirational example of modern leadership in action. The airline wanted to introduce new sales technology and opted not to implement it in the traditional top-down manner. Instead, management invited employees of all ranks and nationalities to apply for a volunteer group that would be responsible for leading this change. The company selected 30 individuals and gave them digital tools to use to develop – and eventually implement – ideas for transforming the company’s ecosystem by harnessing new technology. To take one example, this volunteer effort enabled the airline’s sales force to expand beyond its regular day-to-day activities and self-manage its work across hierarchical and functional lines.

Despite initially being unfamiliar with digital transformation, the volunteers surprised themselves with their imagination, resourcefulness and audacity. This experience, which included interactions within the hierarchical system, expanded their skills, enriched their perception of their work and heightened their ability to affect change. This increased their personal agency, creating more value for the employees and their organization.

“We have reached this multi-crisis state because we are stuck with a certain type of leadership that is profoundly detrimental to our world.”

Schillinger helped the airline create an internal movement in which any employee, regardless of position, could volunteer to join a team and was welcome to participate. Together, they engaged peer-to-peer, creating useful steps for implementing new technology. The volunteers formed a game-changing partnership with the company’s leader, going beyond any destructive “us versus them” attitudes. Shared objectives and joint ownership led to genuine co-creation of the airline’s digital transformation project.

“Engagement leadership” inspires agency and self-motivation.

Companies that respect their employees’ free will enable engagement, innovation, collaboration and accountability. This approach proves more effective than mandates and constraints and generates more value.

“We should be able to start with good enough and improve from there. It is preferable to act, to get things in motion, rather than wait for the ideal conditions and resources to materialize.”

When people share the same information and experience the same situation, they can develop the understanding and trust required for effective collaboration. This highlights the need to discard old leadership modes focused only on individual qualities such as assertiveness, confidence and vision. Instead, the members of a workforce can come to see leadership as a collective capacity within a group, community or network.

Build employee engagement, empowerment and ownership through “liberty, equality and fraternity.”

Leaders must prioritize the relational capacity of their group. That calls for trying to develop relationships and connections within systems, thereby allowing many people to co-create and share in decision-making. Disagreements and arguments are part of this process and can change minds, which is a vital aspect of true leadership.

As the world continues to change and the importance of hierarchy and titles diminishes, those who benefit from privileges must relinquish certain perks. People may worry about their roles and status if they enable the group, and may wonder how their boss or company will view their individual value.

“When professionals believe, usually in good faith, that they have the capacity to make an objective judgment about and direct other people’s actions, we find that liberty at work is severely eroded.”

Companies must find new ways to assess performance and support people. Individuals must connect with others, learn digital tools and share their work in progress. This process involves being open to owning imperfections, inviting feedback and cultivating relationships rather than rushing to a solution.

The French motto of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” (liberty, equality, brotherhood) provides a workable analogy for this level of change.

• Liberty – Liberty means self-empowerment and emancipation from patterns of relationships that no longer serve workers, organizations or the world. Liberty accelerates an enterprise’s progress. It provides people with the freedom to exercise their judgment, avoid arbitrary decision-making and enhance their agency. The journey toward collective freedom begins with the liberation of the individual, a transformative experience sought by those aspiring to improve their ability to take action.
• Equality – Equality means connecting through diversity by replacing traditional relationships of management/employee domination and submission with relationships and networks of equality and diversity. Status inequalities, limited access to information and dominant management/employee relationships impede organizational progress. The appearance of equality alone will not overcome the challenges that arise from managing a diverse workforce. Networks – and the technology and interpersonal connections that support them – provide tremendous opportunities.
• Fraternity – Fraternity, or chosen togetherness, involves working willingly with others. Employees and leaders find this collective approach appealing, interesting and fulfilling. Shared activism and mutual work around a common purpose make networks stick together. Given today’s emphasis on individualism, mistrust and competition, fraternity poses a significant challenge. It involves more than promoting team building and efficiency. Focusing on these aspects yields only superficial outcomes. Genuine fraternity arises from shared dedication to a common cause within an activist movement. Corporate activism allows for the creation of communities or networks seeking purpose and impact – essential drivers of human and economic performance. Activism also offers organizations and leaders extraordinary opportunities for growth, encompassing psychological motivators, engagement methods and tools.

Internal networks can organize and promote novel, efficient collective work practices that replace hierarchical power structures with peer leadership. This fosters agility and innovation and provides a viable alternative to traditional organizational models.

“At the end of the working day, people want to feel a sense of pride and achievement in relation to their own mastery or to what they have helped produce and the wider effect that will have.”

To promote freedom on a larger scale, leaders must adopt new, innovative approaches based on principles that may seem unconventional. By integrating these principles into managerial practices, organizations pave the way for a liberated, successful future.

About the Author

In recognition of her contributions to change in the corporate world, the French government named Céline Schillinger a Knight of the National Order of Merit. With more than 30 years of experience in corporate change, she is a consultant, frequent public speaker, and blogger who covers workplace transformation and related topics at weneedsocial.com/blog.

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