Best of Communities: III. Leadership, Power, and Membership

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One of the ways in which progressive groups tend to be chronically underdeveloped relative to conservative groups is in the area of power and leadership. While communities are full of people with personal experience of what they don’t want, few groups have taken the time to clearly define a model of healthy leadership and appropriate uses of power. Hint: if a group tells you they have no power issues, be very afraid.

This set of 16 articles supplies insights into Leadership, Power, and Membership, including how to understand power in cooperative settings, how to respond when power is being misused, how to define the leadership you want to attract and celebrate, and how to be discerning and pro-active in membership selection and integration .

This digital issue includes the following articles:

1. Power Steering: Driving Bumper to Bumper Down Leadership Lane by Laird Schaub, #128
2. Decision Making in Practice: Leadership Decisions and Majority-Rule Democracy by Rebecca L’Abbe, Directory 2000
3. When Leaders Become Bullies – Pat Wagner, #80-81
4. The Bully Question – Tree Bressen, Laird Schaub, Beatrice Briggs, #145
5. Confronting the Petty Tyrant by Mariana Caplan, #98
6. What to Do When…? by Caroline Estes, Tree Bressen, Beatrice Briggs, Laird Schaub, #130
7. The Power Imbalance: Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It by Caroline Estes, Tree Bressen, Beatrice Briggs, Laird Schaub, #131
8. The Overly Powerful Community Member by Beatrice Briggs, Tree Bressen, Laird Schaub, Caroline Estes, #134
9. Power and Disempowerment on the Ecobus by Chris Roth, #148
10. Roles! Are We Really the Roles We Play in Community? by Tree Bressen, #126
11. Martyrs and Slackers: Finessing the Fit Between Flexible and Fair by Laird Schaub, #138
12. ‘Admissions Standards’ for Communities by Irwin Wolfe Zucker, #96
13. Opening Up to Strangers . . . and the Strange Ways that Kindness May Be Repaid by Laird Schaub, #122
14. Learning to Screen New Members . . . the Hard Way by Don Wedd, #126
15. The Toughest Issue We Ever Faced by Anonymous, #125
16. “Paying” New Members to Learn the Ropes by Deborah Altus, #125