Community leadership
Leadership is a crucial part of fostering strong communities. Leadership helps community members to set directions and priorities, to organise into groups that function well, to maintain enthusiasm and purpose and to put action on-the-ground.
Traditionally, we think of an individual leader with ‘followers’. This kind of leader:
- establishes direction and vision
- encourages and supports others
- is inspiring and motivating
- has passion, enthusiasm and commitment
- can bring people and resources together to make things happen on the-ground.
We certainly need these kinds of leaders. However, these personal characteristics can also be shared collectively between people in a community. For example, groups and whole communities can develop vision and direction, enthusiasm and passion, creativity and implementation. Often this involves helping people to recognise their own leadership qualities such as their vision for their community, their ability to prioritise, and their skills in organising and taking action.
Researchers such as Considine (2004) note that ‘distributed’ leadership, or leadership that makes use of the different kinds of expertise offered by a range of community members, is a key dimension of community strengthening. Falk and Mulford (2001) also explored different types of leadership, ranging from ‘autocratic’ (full control) through to ‘enabling’ (encouraging and supporting).
Extra resources
- Mark Considine includes leadership in his broader discussion of the role of local government in community strengthening: Considine, M. (2004) Community Strengthening and the Role of Local Government, A Discussion Paper. Local Government Victoria, Victoria.
- Falk, I. & Mulford, B. (2001). ‘Enabling leadership: A new community leadership model’. Chapter 24. In I. Falk (Ed.). Learning to manage change: Developing rural communities for a local-global millennium. South Australia: NCVER.
- Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries’ Building Rural Leaders program. The website also features some comments from past participants in the program. the-ground.
