How to Herd Cats: Monofocal Organizations

# What situations have you seen where one person was in charge? How well did that work?

I've seen this a lot - largely with business or pseudo-businesses - and it works as well as the leader does. Where the leader gets distracted and flakes off, direction for the project is lost. Where the leader is committed and directed, it works well.

# What are some advantages and disadvantages of having a single leader?

Advantages: decisions are quick and implementation can be done faster than with committees. There is rarely confusion about where to turn for help and assistance. You don't end up with as many mixed messages as you frequently do with spread-out leadership.

Disadvantages: there's a lot of the weight of responsibility on the leader, and this situation can lead to burnout much faster it might with a committee to spread the burden out on. The group can never rise above the level of commitment and energy of said leader (without a coup!). Usually, loss of a leader is devastating to the group.

# What kind of organizations do best with just one leader? What kind would do better with a different structure?

Structures where decisions need to be made swiftly work best with a single leader who can make them as needed. Business models where accountability is key benefit from a single figurehead. Organizations with a concrete goal - like a publication or a festival work well with a leader in place to be responsible for keeping things moving.

Looser, social groups don't so much need a single leader, since the committee interaction is almost their purpose. This works well for fanclubs, or example, where, rather than marching towards a single goal, the purpose is to 'have fun' and produce some shared world creative material.

# Do you think that monofocal organization is a good idea for Pagan groups?
-

My first Pagan teacher was a woman who had a mixed racial and spiritual heritage that included Micmac-Native influences and Celtic Pagan influences. She was a very strong personality, and preferred to run things on her own. I learned a lot of very valuable things from her and I will always respect those teachings, but she was human and so she also made various mistakes which might have been avoided if she had been working with a balancing partner.

Looking back I can see how at times she was carried away and bloated up by personal pride and enjoyment of wielding power (she was a Leo after-all), she showed serious errors in judgement about many of her students less than trustworthy characters, and she also really held back a lot of her students from becoming more independent.

Do I think a single leader is good for Pagan groups? I think that different people need different things at various points in their life. I think its good that there are multiple choices available to people so they can chose what suits them best at the right time and place. A single leader was great for me at one point in my life, but I later moved on to a coven that had a strong High Priest and High Priestess who worked together as a team to lead the group. I've also seen other types of groups organized by committee. After various experiences with different types of leadership I eventually developed the confidence and know how to lead myself and occasionally get a few other people started along the Pagan path.

No one type of leadership is without flaws. Each also has its own type of strengths to offer. To sum up, I think there should be a variety of options available to people to chose from in terms of Pagan leadership.

I've seen it work well, and I've seen it work very badly. I don't think it's good or bad for Pagan groups in general...it really depends on the group and the leader, just like any other leadership scheme.

One key thing I see frequently is that a single leader is fine under some circumstances, but that this sort of structure often encourages others not to participate in running things, even when asked. That's where burnout comes into play - no matter how hard The Leader (TM) tries to delegate, the others end up believing that The Leader will fix it all anyway (usually based on actual experience, where the leader steps in when things don't get done).

Also, sometimes the "cult of personality" bit gets too far out of hand.

On the other hand, some groups go too far the other way - at least with one leader, decisions are made; decision by consensus for a group with 8-10 people gets messy; when it's 20 or 30 people, it's downright impossible.

Also... even if you don't have a formal "leader" you're likely to have certain dominating personalities in social groups. A clear leader can actually act as a mediator to ensure that everyone's voice is heard, even if decisions are by committee.

I saw on group, where the several people leading and organizing nearly all of the rituals repeatedly, every meeting, asked for others to volunteer to run the next ritual. Eventually, they were practically pleading, because they were hitting burnout, and because they really wanted more group participation for ideological reasons. Then a different group of people staged a coup at the yearly election time, bitterly complaining that the people running the group "never let" anyone else do stuff like run rituals.

I wasn't at my best to observe during that time, having an infant to care for (and sometimes to take away from the meeting, when she got loud, so the meeting could continue), but the prior set of leaders left the group, feeling insulted and unappreciated because the new folks were very vocal, once they had achieved elected office in the group, as to how terrible they thought the prior leaders had been.

I remain, to this day, baffled as to how the second group managed to not hear the first group's repeated requests for volunteers to lead rituals, etc. Or, if they heard them, but did not believe them, why they didn't believe them. I suppose they might have found that claim to be politically expedient, though I thought they believed their complaints at the time, even though they had obviously lived in an alternate universe from the one I perceived that year.

Your thought that the structure of a group can encourage others not to participate, even when asked, is intriguing in light of that past experience.

I think, based on my experience, that the problem is often that people don't volunteer with the first request, so the leader(s) handle whatever was asked, or if the volunteer fails to make a go of their job, the leader(s) step in to pick up the pieces. In general, it encourages dependence, rather than letting people learn from their mistakes.

I know a HPs who handled this poorly - after 3 years of running every ritual, she asked a couple people to manage a few things, and when they weren't as prepared as she wanted, she got up and walked out of her own house instead of running ritual. Had she coached them in the weeks running up to ritual, or checked in on them, or helped them work through their lack of preparation at the time, the group would have survived, but instead it imploded in a very messy way over the next 6 months.