Catalysts are fundamentally different from CEOs

It is easy to confuse decentralized organizations with centralized ones, but they are different in pronounced ways, especially with regard to leadership.

But as we spent more time with the catalysts, powerful patterns emerged that weren’t just new and interesting but also surprising. We were dealing with an entirely different creature from the CEO. … .^[1]

The role of a CEO is common and easily understood. “A CEO is The Boss. He’s in charge, and he occupies the top of the hierarchy.” By contrast, a Catalyst:^[2]

interacts with people as a peer
comes across as your friend
empowers people and gets out of the way
is inspirational and collaborative; “they talk about ideology and urge people to work together to make the ideology a reality.”
avoids attention and tend to work behind the scenes
tends to be mission-oriented, regardless of a profit motive

The tools of a Catalyst include:^[3]

Genuine Interest in Others – “To a catalyst, people are like walking novels.”
Loose Connections – “Most of us have interesting personal conversations with a select group of our closest friends. But a catalyst is able to have these kinds of interactions with thousands—in fact, they thrive on meeting new people every day.”
Mapping – “Catalysts think of who they know, who those people know, how they all relate to one another, and how they fit into a huge mental map. Catalysts don’t just know more people; they also spend time thinking about how each person fits within their network.”
Desire to Help –
Passion – “The catalyst provides the drumbeat for a decentralized organization. Because it can’t draw upon command-and-control to motivate participants, it needs a strong and ongoing ideology to keep them going.”
Meet People Where They Are – “When people feel heard, when they feel understood and supported, they are more likely to change. A catalyst doesn’t prescribe a solution, nor does he hit you over the head with one. Instead, he assumes a peer relationship and listens intently. You don’t follow a catalyst because you have to—you follow a catalyst because he understands you.”
Emotional Intelligence – “All the catalysts we’ve met are intellectually brilliant, but they tend to lead with emotions.”
Trust – “It’s not enough to meet people where they are and to form emotional bonds with them; a catalyst must also trust the network. With a flattened hierarchy, you never know what people are going to do. You can’t control the outcomes, and you can’t really reproach a member if he becomes errant. All you can control is whether people have personal relationships with each other based on trust.”
Inspiration – “A true catalyst isn’t just a matchmaker but also an inspiration to others to work toward a goal that often doesn’t involve personal gain.”
Tolerance for Ambiguity – “One of the most common answers we got when we talked to catalysts was ‘I don’t know.’ … Catalysts aren’t absent-minded. They often don’t know because there aren’t concrete answers to these questions. Being a catalyst requires a high tolerance for ambiguity. That’s because a decentralized organization is so fluid that someone who needs order and structure would quickly go mad.”
Hands-Off Approach – “Perhaps the most difficult and counterintuitive element of being a catalyst is getting out of the way. … giving members a high level of ownership over the organization.”
Receding – “After catalysts map a network, make connections, build trust, and inspire people to act, what do they do? They leave. If they were to stay around, catalysts might block the decentralized organization’s growth.”

#leadership #influence