For the last decade or so leadership thinking has encouraged us to see ‘leadership as a team sport’.  Collaboration, distributed action, innovation, participation are the sources of power that leadership draws on and unleashes in the many, not the few. And this is undoubtedly a good thing.

However, as we confront a climate and biodiversity crisis; as we wrestle with growing inequality and polarisation; and as we search for new forms of economy, new forms of national and global governance, and if we are to create private firms capable of more than just maximising share holder profit –  maybe we are going to need a few more heroes to show up? 

We will never deal with the complex and ambiguous challenges we face if we just wait for some sort of heroic leader to show up. That is, someone who seems to have more courage, more certainty, more insight, more knowledge, more passion, more hair, just more… than we have. They are not coming. Mostly because they don’t exist. But also because no one person, however brilliant, and well intentioned can tackle complex problems alone. Collective action is the only form of action. 

However, the sort of challenges we face are going to require significant disruption of the status quo. They are going to require businesses to internalise things that they have long externalised – like their impact on their environment, or on the health and wellbeing of staff. Government departments  need to change how they relate to citizens; academic institutions need to take responsibility for both who they educate and who (and why) they exclude. International NGOs will need to let go of some of the resources they control and let others control them if decolonisation and localisation are to be realised. What ever sector you sit in there are deep changes to make in who has power, who is served, who is excluded. And as with all systems level change, there will be resistance. 

Significant shifts in power have never come through consensus. They have been pushed for and demanded and alternatives built to prove what’s possible. And people have taken risks to do these things. Personal risks – with their own careers, assets, popularity, credibility and even their bodies. And this is the sort of heroic leadership we are going to need. The sort where individuals are willing to risk things that matter to them; and to be seen to do so. 

But it is not an either or. We are going to need both heroic leadership acts and mass unleashed, collaborative, participatory, experimental, unstoppable, relentless leadership. So there are a few caveats in my call for a little more heroism: