“We have built our organizations around an idea that our leadership should come from either a single individual or a small group. This leads to the consolidation of responsibility and power in the people who occupy those positions and the creation of positions within organizations that demand long hours, compromised personal lives, and distance from personally fulfilling client and program work in order [to] focus on administration.”

“When we expect a single leader (or small group of “leaders”) to create a system that will define and coordinate all individuals’ relationship to the organization by assigning roles and titles, we ignore the potential of every member to decide for themselves how to use the personal and interpersonal resources at their disposal to support the organization. We inhibit the dynamic, innovative, and agile responses that empowered people are capable of and choose static control and repetition instead.”

“Leadership is the practice of maximizing the use of one’s individual talents and the potential of a team to develop and execute a vision. It is the practice of seeing the relationship of the individual to the group, and creating spaces where individual actions combine to achieve collective vision.”