Collective Intelligence in Leadership - Research Paper Example

 Collective Intelligence in Leadership Leadership main purpose is an expression of true character and creativity. A leader will be accused of organizational failure, which can be a result of external uncertainty. In this century, individual leadership should long be gone. It is very difficult for an individual leader to manage all the intensity and complexity of modern organizations and institutions. Individuals, organizations, and institutions should realize that power is decaying, and it should be held collectively and socially (Bonabeau, 1999). Business organizations and other institutions are stuck in the way they relate to their employees and customer. There is a growing demand from the society demanding for enhanced accountability, transparency and multi-stakeholders solutions that are out-of-synch from such organizations. Historic forms of leadership are now inadequate, and this demand new forms of leadership. The new forms demand changes in a manner which work is organized, governance issues, commerce, organization learning, and social networks in the work place. It is due to such inadequacy in individual leadership that ‘collective leadership’ has been developed. Collective leadership can be simply defined as leading together as partners. Künkel (2005) defines collective leadership as “the capacity of a group of leaders to deliver a contribution in service of the common good through assuming joint and flexible leadership, according to what is perceived and required.” Collective intelligence (CI) is coined in collective leadership to enhance a sustainable form of leadership in organizations. Importance to leadership sustainability is spread where collective intelligence is employed in action, hence multiplying the capacity of the system. The MIT center for CI defines collective intelligence as a situation where groups of leaders or individuals do things mutually that seems intelligent (Malone, 2007). Collective intelligence is also described as a form of universal, distributed intelligence, which arises; as a result collaboration of many individuals (Levy, 1997). It is also the ability of a group of leaders to perform various tasks (Woolley et al., 2010). Collective intelligence realizes the fact that organizations are created on the conjecture that their members especially their leaders can do more together than they could do alone. Leaders of the future will have difficult in managing collective intelligence since intelligence is still limited and imposes a critical curb on their ability to cooperate. Everybody in an organization strives to be recognized, which means that people will try to play power games. Individuals would like to be recognized as the smartest in the organization, and in some instances they would disregard ideas of others. Such power games will pose a great challenge to leaders who will be managing collective intelligence in the future. Collective intelligence is characterized by individuals or leaders who have differences in diversity. Dealing with such individuals will be very problematic and challenging since tensions and conflicts can arise among this leaders and individuals. The only way that is managing such people will be successful will be when each individual agrees to share and work out the differences in better collective leadership. There is also complexity when it comes to balancing collective and individual intelligence (Levy, 1997). The ideas generated from collective intelligence can see some collective leaders favor some ideas. The self-serving bias is what will arise in such a situation, which means that a leader will rely on information or intelligence that will seek to favor his assumption. Another key challenge that managers are likely to face in future in relation to collective intelligence is loss of control. It is likely to manifest itself in two ways, and one is undesirable and unwanted outcome – the collective intelligence can result in harming the organization. The second one is unpredictability – the intelligence might not be harmful to the organization, but the organization might not be prepared for the intelligence. The effect of biasness in organizations can be mitigated by proper utilization of collective intelligence. For instance, it can be a tool for providing a diversity of viewpoints and input that prevent self-serving bias and belief of perseverance. Diversity has also been established to fight pattern obsession and framing of negative effects. The fact that everybody in the organization might strive to be recognized and outsmart others in the quest of providing collective intelligence is an opportunity a leader might take to be successful (Malone, 2010). Motivation is very important when dealing with collective people, and this will solve the differences that may arise in collective intelligence. As a leader of collective intelligence motivation will make, individuals in collective intelligence provide more furnished intelligence. This will make the leader of collective intelligence make and pick the best intelligence that can be used to benefit the organization. The tensions and conflicts created can be managed by a leader by formulating policies that will control the intelligence groups. There is a close relationship between collective intelligence and leadership in the workforce since collective intelligence is the ability solving problems collectively. A leader will be required to solve problems that may arise in the work force. A mental map is necessary for problems-solving because it is a representation of different states of the problem, actions, and preferences. Therefore, it is prudent for a leader to solve problems in the workforce collectively to avoid conflict and perceptions of biasness. Individuals in the workforce might be asked to contribute to decisions, and most likely some might misbehave. The workforce is then required to be governed by mutual policing by implementing a code of conduct that will manage the workforce’s behavior. In conclusion, it can be said that leadership for collective intelligence is for organizations and individuals who are determined to take leadership to the next level. There is a great need for building an alignment around the leadership situations in a workforce. Collective intelligence is very critical in today’s leadership organization because it offers solutions collectively. Collective intelligence plays a very important role in leadership in enhancing the sustainability of collective worth. Though there are some challenges that might arise due to the evolution of collective intelligence in leadership, it can be mitigated and capitalized. References Bonabeau, E. (1999) Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems, Oxford University Press, 305 pages Künkel, P. (2005) Collective Leadership – A Pathway to Collective Intelligence, Collective Leadership Institute, www.collectiveleadership.com Levy, P. (1997) Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace, Basic Books. Malone, T. W., Laubacher, R. and Dellarocas, C. (2010) “The Collective Intelligence Genome,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 51, 3: 21-31. Malone, W. Th., (2007), MIT Center for Collective Intelligence - Overview (presentation received in email from the author). Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N. and Malone, T. (2010), “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups,” Science, 330, 686-688. Read More