Leadership: Building Constituencies

Comment: This is the fourth post of the Leadership Process series. I began this series because I saw a lack of rigor and discipline to leadership. The purpose of these posts is to look at a process model used by leaders. 

Building Constituencies

A constituency is a collective name for stakeholders, principles, champions, and other contributors to the vision. The topic, building constituencies, perhaps makes the leader more of a politician than any other character type. The political style depends on the ground conditions.  Nonetheless, the process is relatively stable.  Often the constituency needs to be convinced or persuaded of the vision both in the beginning and as the leader builds a broader base of support. Thus, constituency building began before arriving at the point of growing a broader base. Let's back track a little first.

In the Beginning...

Putting together a constituency at the outset can be difficult task since the benefits are often obscure and long term. The nature of a vision is complex and can be incoherent during the early development. Thus, the need for leadership. The vision cannot be managed nor implemented by a single entity either. Hence, the need for a constituency. Any vision creates winners and losers. The constituencies are the winners in the vision but not to the full exclusion of the losers. They play a resistance role. The vision needs to be legitimized by key decision makers and vision champions who assert the vision is vital and necessary. In the end, the vision is presented as valid and desirable by the early constituency which are also known as principle stakeholders. 

Building a Broader Base

Broad support for a vision and/or change is frequently absent. The vision must be marketed and promoted in order to persuade the broader base who will benefit from the vision and/or change in some manner. The 'who' participates question focuses on various stakeholders who have the power to help or obstruct the policy. The 'what' question addresses the kind of participation being undertaken. The 'how' clarifies the qualitative aspect of participation. These stakeholders can be internal or external to the organization and can be of various roles to include:

• Information Sharers:  These stakeholders legitimize a vision by brokering information and facilitating communications. They utilize many channels and media. 
• Consultants: These stakeholders exchange views and gain feedback.  They typically will hold all hands meetings, round tables, and other forums for the critiquing of views. 
• Collaborators:  These stakeholders retain decision-making abilities while bringing in external actors to problem solve, design and evaluate, monitor, etc...
• Joint Decision-makers:  These stakeholders are collaborators who share decision-making authority. 
• Power Brokers:  These stakeholders transfer control over decisions, resources, and activities to other stakeholders and entities. The purpose of this is empowerment such that actors can act in their own interest and deliver higher quality deliverables. 

Think of the stakeholder roles as interconnected and building on each other, sharing information, promoting two way communication, and blending views, interest, and collaboration in order to advance the vision meaningfully. A single stakeholder may play several roles or at least change roles as the project progresses.

Participation: Costs and Benefits

Constituency building, by definition, is bringing in stakeholders in order to participate in vision legitimization. Participation options are expansive and based on the objectives established. The leader must manage the participation in order to avoid confusion and a cacophony of activity. There are limits and trade offs to participation. Some checklist questions on participation levels follow:

1. Will the benefits of participation outweight the costs?
2. Will the participation strengthen technical content, legitimacy, or ownership of the vision? 
3. Will including more participants contribute or dilute the vision's objectives and effects?
4. Is increasing participants necessary to adequately design or implement the objectives and goals?
5. Are there conflicts or potentials for conflict between the participants and expectations?
6. How much time will be required to incorporate participants and does that conflict with the schedules?

Increasing or decreasing participation creates a variety of issues. The key element of deciding if participation is necessary or not is the benefits over the cost.

Who should Participate?

Who should participate in the first place is a big question that requires careful consideration. A major concern is that a participant does not take over the vision with self-interest. Thus, the focus is limiting participation from this perspective. In a democratized culture, control over participation is slim as everyone should exercise a say. In this case, there will be competitive efforts and conflict. Leaders will need to manage the conflict. The greater effort is opening up the vision beyond the inner circle rather than limiting participation. Leaders will want to focus on participants who have the greatest stake in the vision.

A stakeholder register and analysis will aide in identifying the key actors.  Basic questions need to answered in selecting the key actors.

1. Who are the vision's winners and losers?
2. What does each actor offer for its interest?
3. Will the participant improve quality of vision formulation and performance?
4. Will the participant homogenize the group?
5. Will excluding or minimizing a participant create vision hardship?
6. Will the participant cost more than it contributes? 

Once again the key question is regarding cost and benefits, question 6.

Mechanisms

This brings us back to the stakeholder types mentioned earlier. Increasing participation reduces unilateral and autonomous decision authority but higher participation is not inherently better. Nonetheless, the mechanisms of participation reflect the stakeholder types.

• Information Sharing: This is foundational to participation.  Controlling information remains with the leaders or visionaries. The notion is that participation in the vision is transparent, responsive, and accountable.
• Consultative: Participants are invited to share views in specific venues. This must be a transparent and sincere attempt to listen to views or it will backfire.
• Collaboration: This is a effort of cooperation across organizational and external boundaries. Successful consultative efforts migrate into collaborative efforts as part of relationship building. 
• Joint Decision-making:  Collaboration dove tails often into joint decision making efforts. 
• Empowerment:  Leaders empower actors or stakeholders to pursue self-determined objectives and goals. This may include capability and capacity building in support of the vision and its objectives. 

In Conclusion

More participation means increasing democratization. Most large organizations are matrices of various sorts. Matrix orgaizations operate well under democracy and leaders are more akin to a politician. However, if the leadership remains hierarchial and in full control then participation is nullified. Leadership must assess and determine the degree to which control is relinquished and the participants are empowered. The process begins by sharing information, consulting with the participants, permitting collaboration to occur, the allowing the participants control over certain decisions which ultimately empowers the participants who then effect the the vision for the leader.

Comment: The workplace is always a learning crucible. Matrix organizations increased in occurence over the last 15 years in large numbers disrupting hierarchial regimes. Many professionals have been struggling in these new environments to find ways to manage and to lead. I have been highlighting  methods, tactics, techniques, and practices often used by democratic governments to advance policy reforms then applied them to the workplace. Employing these concepts could help gain improved results. Please stay tuned as the posts will continue to detail the leadership process model.