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What does leadership look like when participation is voluntary? This question came to mind as I was recently reading about leadership attributes. In one of my professional contexts, I work as a maintainer and community leader for an open source school platform called Gibbon. In this open source context, the people who choose to contribute their time and expertise to build the project are there of their own volition. I wondered: what attributes of leadership are the most essential in this situation? Throughout my readings, I used this question as a lens to examine and consider digital leadership in an open source context.<\/p>\n
Trust is a cornerstone of open source communities, since many members join the community as strangers. In a blog post about digital leadership, Sheninger (2014) states that \u201cit all begins with trust\u201d (para. 6). He urges digital leaders to \u201cgive up control\u201d in order to \u201cunleash creativity and passion\u201d in others (para. 6). This can be a difficult yet essential step for open source leaders. At some point, there\u2019s too much work to be done by one person, and a leader needs to share the load. However, since members there there voluntarily and many have never met in person, it can be a tricky position to trust them, and in turn be trusted by them. In this way, trust is a two-fold attribute: both trusting\u2014the capacity to place belief and reliance in others, and trustworthiness\u2014the \u201cability to be relied on as honest or truthful\u201d (“Trustworthiness”, n.d.). Kouzes and Posner (2011) suggest \u201cthe simple truth is that trusting other people encourages them to trust you, and distrusting others makes them more likely to distrust you\u201d (p. 78). With this leadership attribute in mind, it may not be possible to build an open source community without some fundamental level of trust.<\/p>\n
Leadership in an open source context should also be adaptive and flexible. Khan (2017) highlights how adaptive leadership provides a greater responsiveness towards change and increased motivation in followers. Her research finds that adaptive leadership is beneficial \u201cin complex situations where the leader-follower relationship is attended to, but so are all environmental, cultural, and societal factors that will affect leaders and followers\u201d (p. 180). Open source communities are fundamentally complex: their members may be anywhere in the world, speak different languages, and have different values. Paying attention to the leader-follower relationship in an open source community is also crucial because the organization structure may not follow a standard top-down hierarchy. Transactional reward-based leadership may be less effective because community members are already participating voluntarily, and their motivation is likely to be intrinsic rather than extrinsic. Adaptive leadership, with its flexibility and responsiveness towards complex factors, becomes an essential approach for digital leadership in open source communities.<\/p>\n
Transparency and communication may also be essential leadership attributes for situations where participation is voluntary. Sheninger (2014) numbers communication as the first of seven Pillars of Digital Leadership in Education. He states that \u201cdigital leadership is about engaging all stakeholders in two-way communication\u201d (para. 9). I think two-way communication is a logical foundation for open source communities: leaders may not see much headway by giving directives or commands one-way. \u201cStatic, one-way methods such as newsletters and websites [no longer] suffice\u201d (Sheninger, 2014, para. 9). Community members are there voluntarily, and their motivation to contribute is likely tied to their having a voice in the project. For open source leaders to build a thriving community, they may need to build channels of communication that foster active two-way participation in the project.<\/p>\n
What other leadership attributes are essential to a context where community members are voluntary, distributed globally, and motivated intrinsically? As I continue to research leadership and change in this course I hope to revisit the ideas in this blog post, and I\u2019m curious to hear what leadership attributes my cohort members might suggest adding to this list.<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Khan, N. (2017). Adaptive or transactional leadership in current higher education: A brief comparison. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning<\/em>, 18<\/em>(3), 178\u2013183. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.19173\/irrodl.v18i3.3294<\/p>\n Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2011). Engender Trust. In Credibility: How leaders gain and lose it, why people demand it<\/em>. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. Retrieved from https:\/\/ezproxy.royalroads.ca\/sso\/skillport?context=43184<\/p>\n Sheninger, E. (2014). Pillars of Digital Leadership. International Center for Leadership in Education<\/em>, 4. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.leadered.com\/pdf\/LeadingintheDigitalAge_11.14.pdf<\/p>\n Trustworthiness. (n.d.). In Lexico by Oxford University Press (OUP)<\/em>. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.lexico.com\/en\/definition\/trustworthiness<\/p>\n Attribution What does leadership look like when participation is voluntary? This question came to mind as I was recently reading about leadership attributes. In one of my professional contexts, I work as a maintainer and community leader for an open source school platform called Gibbon. In this open source context, the people who choose to contribute… Continue reading Digital Leadership in Open Source<\/span>
\nImage by MetsikGarden<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"