I hope you are aware that the Leadership Development Working Group (LDWG) has been working over the past few months to formulate and find ways to nurture the leadership of our movement. The LDWG is a group of Wikimedia volunteers representing different communities, languages, roles, and experiences. We are pleased to inform the community that our draft definition of leadership is now available for community feedback. This first draft definition of leadership was written after months of discussion, learning, and sharing from our community perspective. The Wikimedia Movement, which is by nature diverse and distinctive in its own way, is expressly addressed by this definition.
Please consider going through the definition and letting us know what you think by October 6, 2022. The draft definition includes a general definition of leadership and subcategories that elaborate on the actions, qualities, and outcomes of good leadership.
There are many places where you can express your ideas, suggestions, and comments, such as the Meta-Wiki talk page, the feedback form, and this forum thread! You can also directly email us at leadershipworkinggroupwikimedia.org.
You can check if the general definition, and the subcategories align with your idea of leadership in the movement. You can also try finding the gaps, maybe some qualities of a leader or anything else are missing in the draft definition or you can check if the definition applies to all cultural, linguistic, community or other contexts of the movement and share your thoughts with us.
Together, let’s celebrate the movement’s diverse and distinctive leadership!
If you are unsure where to put your thoughts regarding the draft definition of leadership, here’s a quick way. You can directly vote in this discourse poll and help us make this definition more accurate. Please don’t hesitate to drop your thoughts in the reply to this thread if you disagree with any of the following sentences or want to share any additional comments. Your opinion is extremely valuable to us!
Broad overarching definition
In the following statements, you will find each sentence of the draft definition. The definition is comprised of two parts: a broad overarching definition and three subcategories that elaborate on the actions, qualities, and outcomes of leadership. Please provide your constructive feedback in the reply to this thread. If you don’t agree with any section in the definition, provide your reasoning to help us improve the definition.
Leadership is a complex and nuanced phenomenon that manifests differently based on linguistic, socio-cultural and community contexts.
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Leadership can often be seen in skills and qualities of an individual, however, it is not tied to a specific position or role.
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Leadership can be demonstrated in the way a group of people work together, take decisions, distribute responsibility and strive towards a common goal or vision.
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Leadership can be understood as the ability to guide, inspire, build autonomy, encourage and motivate a group of people towards a shared future.
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Three categories through which leadership could be further qualified
This section shares three subcategories to the definition which aim to provide details about the actions, qualities and outcomes that good leadership encourages. Please read the statements and choose the parts that you agree with by clicking the checkboxes. Please feel free to add more categories or drop your thoughts regarding the existing categories in the reply to this thread.
Actions of good leaders:
Facilitating the setting of a shared vision through careful thought, discussion and decision making.
Guiding and supporting collaborative decision making for the community to create shared strategies to achieve their vision.
Creating and sustaining a supportive environment for community members to bring forth creative ideas and new ways of doing things.
Generating and retaining trust within the community through transparency, inclusivity and autonomy of the group.
Inspiring, encouraging and motivating community members through positive influencing to take reasonably justified risks, think outside the box and experiment.
Facilitating the elimination of any obstructions ensuring they do not become a barrier to others.
Seeking to understand the skills and interests of other community members to best support the use of their strengths creating an atmosphere of self-motivation.
Agree with none of the above
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Qualities of good leaders:
Resilience: Ability to push through difficulties and challenges by reassessing strategies, changing methods and/or slowing down.
Steady growth: Willingness to try new ways of doing things and learn from mistakes made along the way.
Integrity: Adherence to agreed upon values and norms.
Focus: Balancing the needs of the community with long-term and short-term goals, integrating consensus on the approach to achieve these goals.
Courage: Willingness to take calculated risks, not being afraid of making mistakes. Shielding community members who are in the process of learning from their failures. Promoting other people’s success.
Empathy: Ability to sense emotions, needs and desires of others and to (re-)act sensibly.
Accountability: Accepting responsibility for a set of duties; being mindful of time, place and persons related to those duties.
Agree with none of the above
0voters
Outcomes achieved because of good leadership:
People release creative ideas.
People develop and achieve a common goal.
People keep an open spirit and stay curious.
Presence of a common feeling that people are valued and listened to.
Leadership is the ability to inspire change, creativity in people to create and become their best version by harnessing and channeling their inherent qualities,characters and competencies.Leadership often involves capacity building and mentoring to enable growth and a push form the comfort zone.
Leadership also values delegation and understands it helps the lead build confidence and ability.
leadership is the ability to a) identify goals important to enrich wikipedia content as an encyclopedia, but also, on a different note, to b) identify different methods to increase engagement by the public with the wikipedia community. these goals can be totally divergent, sometimes, but they both have importance.
in addition leadership is the ability to c) identify areas where wikipedia procedures need to be improved, or made easier to understand; d) places where new resources need to be provided, or existing resources need to be improved, for the benefit of the wikipedia community.
sorry if my answer above diverges from the initial question somewhat. I realize my answers tend more towards the prosaic, and towards items more specific to wikipedia itself. however, that is the essence of how I perceive the concept of “leadership,” in the specific actual ways that would give it some real and meaningful basic relevance to the wiki community. I sincerely hope that’s helpful.
wikimedia.org.