When it comes to growing flourishing networks, there are two kinds of leaders. Network-friendly leaders actively add to the growth of networks by continuously connecting people to openly share ideas, help, information, support and resources. Others are major barriers. Network-hostile leaders become the greatest barriers to the growth of networks & collaborations by demanding to never be the last one to know, or to be never left out of collaborations. Some organizations actually sustain explicit expectations that leaders be network-hostile by embarrassing them any instance where their people have more communication going on than any single leader does or ever could be capable. Holding leaders accountable for knowing more than a network is, aside from completely unrealistic and ridiculous, destructive to the dynamic and growth of self-organizing networks.
Organizations clear on the power of networks only support leaders who support the growth of networks across the organization vertically and horizontally, internally and externally.
