I read Leadership as Hospitality when @Malcolm_Ocean mentioned it to me in a reply Tweet. I wrote some thoughts about it. They don’t really constitute a blog post! But I am putting them on here, so that it’s easily readible. You see, them Tweets have a word limit.
There were a two things I riffed off of:
For a lot of people “leadership” is a dirty word…
Yes! For me too.
Reading this makes me aware of how our life experiences can lead us to think of some concepts as being dirty.
What does it mean when we call something dirty? it’s referring to the feeling we have of that thing. We try to avoid it. We are repulsed by it.
Even if we attribute respect to it in practice, we don’t include it in the things we appreciate the beauty of.
It’s not part of our “taste.”
And for me, leadership used to be like that too.
Yes, ‘leaders’. When I heard that word before, i used to think of repulsive people. People who are very disconnected from the things i would describe as beautiful.
And then power also starts to seem like an ugly word.
Especially in the context of ugly leadership, power starts to seem like an ugly word.
Yet… why should things be that way?
Leadership can be liberating.
Leaders can lead us out of dire situations.
One person among us can open up their connections for the whole to access and benefit from. These connections can bring the whole, US, the community, the power it needs to escape that unfavorable situation.
That “connection” can be anything; and in all its forms, i feel like it’s “knowledge.”
You might know somebody who can help, you might have learned a skill good enough to help, you might know some trick (or knowledge of a field) that can help.
If those ones who can help, can use that knowledge, to help us, to help others, then it’s a liberating thing.
If one can use their power to help others, it’s a liberating thing.
One’s power allows for the whole to be functional again.
And it is a way for the person who leads, to liberate themselves too!
First you have the problem yourself: you are a part of the whole.
You want to fix that problem. You see that you need others to fix it. Simultaneously, you see how others are also experiencing that problem. You realize that you need to expand your struggle, and allow others to join in.
You try to get them together. You try to call upon their power. You yourself couldn’t solve it alone…
And then the problem gets fixed.
Liberating.
Happiness bringing.
An example liberation:
The Ergenekon legend was the first thing that came to my mind. I learned it at school.
In the Turkic mythology, The Ergenekon legend tells about a great crisis of the ancient Turks. Following a military defeat, the Turks took refuge in the legendary Ergenekon valley where they were trapped for four centuries. They were finally released when a blacksmith created a passage by melting the mountain, allowing the gray wolf Asena to lead them out. The people led out of the valley founded the Turkic Khaganate, with the valley functioning as its capital.
Wikipedia – Ergenekon
(This myth has been taken up as a nationalist story. I don’t use it like that. It has power on its own, and value.
I wrote about this before: The stories had power before nationalist movements started to use them as weapons. )
In this story we can see all the elements of the leader dynamics.
The blacksmith is one among many.
The blacksmith faces the problem themself, at first. Then they use knowledge, blacksmithing, to fix that problem.
The blacksmith melts the mountain of iron, and liberates the community.
By freeing the whole, the one has freed themselves. And it’s a communal effort.
Then the whole can be functional again.
Leadership as a liberation~~
i’ve got more to riff on. The rest of my writing focuses on what the article is actually about: leadership as hospitality.
I kind of want to take a break and write about that in detail, later. However, here’s a snippet!
Leadership as Hospitality
Our loved ones are leaders.
(or can be.)
When they choose to help us, it’s liberating.
And they don’t dominate us in their offering of help.
They do it because they can.
Let me focus on parents, as a “loved ones as leaders.” How are our parents able to help us so much? They were born before us. They have a different distribution of powers. They CAN help. Something that’s easy for them to fix, can be an insurmountable obstacle for us, at times.
And it’s not only parents. Some people describe some friends they have as “parently.” Because those are the friends in their lives, that give them that sense of security, and they know they will extend their helping hand in times of need.
Helping in this way is very liberating, in a different way. The helper may not essentially be helping themselves, in helping you. They might be sacrificing from themselves. But that’s the kind of leadership, the kind of help, we get from the parently people in our lives.
Power can be synonymous with love.
wow.
bitti. :^)
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