Good morning, and I hope this finds you each well and rested after the weekend.

I've been re-reading the work of thinker, writer and education activist Parker Palmer in recent days. Palmer writes "…scholars now understand that knowing is a profoundly communal act. Nothing could possibly be known by the solitary self, since the self is inherently communal in nature." (Palmer, To Know as We are Known, EPub Edition March 2010). As I mentioned in Leadership Notes October 5 '09, I think there is an inextricalble link between learning and leading, that is, that a fundamental role of the leader is to create and/or maintain an environment where people, including him or her self, are constantly learning and growing. Palmer's note adds to this point. Leadership, as much as we like to think of the solitary self at the top of the organization chart, is in fact part of a communal act of governance. Leaders depend on followers; think about Ghandi's oft quoted line, 'there go my people, I must follow them, for I am their leader."

How do we allow for this fundamentally communal part of leadership when we are responsible for moving 'x' from point 'a' to point 'b' or making 'x' number of widgets in a presecribed time? That is, how do we manage to the standards, how do we make decisions in a timely fashion and still honour the communal nature of leadership? One practice is to be clear about the kinds of decisions we are making. There are those decisions that are necessarily made by the leader alone, where speed is of utmost importance and the need for buy in is at it's lowest. We might call these decisions, D1 decisions. At the other end of the continuum we have D5 decisions, where time is not very important, and buy in is absolutuely vital. Between these two are D2, D3 and D4 for decisions which require decreasing need for speed and increasing need for buy in. For example, in a D3 decision, the leader may say, "we have a choice of 3 possible directons, I need your recommendations on which of the three we'll choose. I'll make the choice, and to make the best choice, I need your recommendations." Clarity about which decisions are exclusively the leader's, and which are best made by the group will help ensure that we can manage to standards and create and maintain a learing environment.

I hope that your week is filled with opportunities for such clarity.