How to Herd Cats #2: Leadership

Too often in history you see people overthrow a dictator only to put a new dictator in place. They are used to one particular style of leader, and they don't rethink what the term should mean, or the organizational structure the leader is part of, they instead blame the person in the position of leader for being a bad person and assume all will be great if they change the person.

I think a lot of pagans are aware that if you keep the same hierarchical structure, you are likely to get the same results even if there is a different person at the top of the structure.

Of course, that doesn't mean they have a clue about how to change the structure in any constructive fashion.

I think that's why so many decide they want to just opt out of having any hierarchical structure.

But having "no leader", and no structure, can be dangerous too. I remember being a part of a writing group where one person (yes, a pagan) was organizing all the meetings, running all the meetings, reminding people when it was their turn to contribute or host a gathering, etc. Admittedly, she also occasionally stated that she was NOT the leader of the group. But she was acting as a leader in everything the group did, so everyone else perceived she was the de facto leader, never mind that there were no elected officers or anything like that. This, plus her characteristically emphatic way of speaking her opinions, plus a lack of care to make a distinction between her personal opinions and things she had checked out as facts (and also a lack of considering how her words would be taken by the folks who clearly were treating her as the leader), led to some substantial misunderstandings and hurt feelings, which were not helped at all by her refusing to take any responsibility for the actions she took that (in substantial part) led to the mess, because she "was not the leader". In her opinion, people shouldn't have interpreted her words as if she were leading, no matter how many leader-type actions she was doing.

So, that was an instance where people who were used to a hierarchical structure, and did not choose any particular structure for their group. But when one person led, they followed as if a hierarchical structure were in place.

In cases like this, people can (and I think, are likely to) interpret what's happening as if it were a hierarchical structure--and, in fact, the type of hierarchical structure that they are most used to for the situation they are in.

I think pagans do want something different from our leaders than the kind of organized hierarchy we see in most Christian churches. I think discussions like this are very valuable, because to have a different outcome you do need to do things differently. And to have a different outcome in a group, the individual members need to have some ongoing cues that this isn't just like the structure they grew up in, or they will continue to act (and act out) in the same ways in reaction (pro or con) to the structure they perceive, even if others in the group perceive the structure, and their respective roles in it, differently.

Hmm...that sentence is awfully convoluted. I don't know if I said that effectively, but I'm running out of lunch hour, so I'll send it out and if it's confusing, I'll try to clarify later.