distributed leadership

What is distributed leadership?

One of our newest members works at Satyam in Northern California. Satyam's founder was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year in 2007. Satyam follow a model of distributed leadership in which founder Ramalinga Raju says his job is to create leaders, not followers. Other organizations around the world, such as the UK's Northern Leadership Academy, promote Distributed Leadership as a model of leadership that allows us to embed leadership in the system rather than have leadership associated with one or a few leaders at the top, who inevitably come and go.

I am looking into the concept and practice of "Distributed Leadership". I have a situation in my workplace where a team of 20 plus staff have been leaderless for some while and the next layer down, reluctant to take ownership and consequently leadership has become divided, demotivated and devoid of quality. I have only just started the task of fully reviewing "Distributed Leadership" as a possible solution but my reading so far shows it to have been employed with success in the academic arenas of University and Colleges.

I like this, from Ed Batista's review of the book Forces For Good:

"To me, the great leaders today are able to align people around a sense of purpose and values and get that consistency all around the globe, and then empower other people to step up and lead. And I've found that in organizations that are really effective at generating leaders, there are thousands of leaders because people empower them to step up and lead."