Collaborative leadership

See Torbert's article here. A criticism I've had before on Torbert's work is that it focuses on just changing the leadership of an organization. It still maintains the earlier action logic that organizations need hierarchical leadership that transforms the org from the top down based on the hero/leader mythology. While he does list (in his charts) a transforming leadership creates an organization of collaborative inquiry from a participatory approach, it's still the bosses that do this when collaborative inquiry redefines organizational interaction as peer to peer.

That doesn't negate that some peers assume leadership roles in some contexts, but it does challenge the same top leaders in charge all the time on everything. He does in fact note that "committed collaborative action in teams" is required. And that "transforming leaders lead toward collective leadership." Yet it seems that CEOs and org Boards are still the final arbiters of organizational policy and decision, when orgs run on collaborative inquiry processes have proven that they can run without such top heavy structures (e.g. here and here). 


Even Harvard is getting in on the action with this collaborative leadership training: "You will explore the current evolution of organizational design from traditional, command-and-control models to a system of empowered networks [... and] gain critical insights about broad macro-level shifts in organizational design from traditional, command-and-control organizational structure towards a team-centric structure organized for autonomy, agility, and purpose." Also explored: "Alternative models to hierarchy (including organic forms, cross functional teams, holacracy, collaborative leadership development)."