Spider Vs Starfish

Leadership is not a position, it is a choice. Good leaders enable people and communicate to them about their potential so that they start believing in their talents. I have experienced how my leadership capacity has expanded when I have focused my passion and energies on developing people as leaders. 

 

Leadership in this century needs to be adaptive and distributed across an organisation. The starfish and spider are metaphors for the shape of things to come. Starfish is a creature with no central nervous system and that's what makes it extraordinarily resilient. Cut a starfish in two and it regenerates into two starfishes, each capable of independent life. A spider, on the other hand, is controlled from the top and lacks a defence system. If a spider loses its leg it is crippled; and if its head is cut off it dies. Spiders represent command and control based hierarchical structures which will soon become extinct. Starfishes represent agile organisations of the future; where knowledge and authority reside at the edges.

 

Successful leaders will be the ones who are people centric, authentic and values driven. Unfortunately, in recent times we have witnessed economic destruction and erosion of trust at a scale never seen before caused by corrosive leadership and ‘win at all costs’ models.