佛罗里达州帕克兰的学生登上了《财富》2018年全球50位最伟大领袖（World’s 50 Greatest Leaders）排行榜的榜首，#MeToo运动排在第三位。今天，社会运动同样重要。个体团结在一起可以推翻公司高管，破坏一个行业，左右选举结果，并对政策计划造成严重破坏。

随着社交媒体和其他民主化技术的出现，有许多媒体在讨论这种“新力量” — 去中心化的网络如何碾压更传统的、自上而下的模式。但社会变革者们对这种新力量并不陌生。

虽然每一次运动都表现为集体领导的形式，但并非所有运动都是生而平等的。有些运动团结在一个共同的愿景之下取得了成功。但有些运动未能获得动力，最终失控或者只是昙花一现。

一项运动能否成功，取决于其领导方式。任何一组热情澎湃的人都可以在华盛顿组织一次抗议或游行，但社会变革终究是一种领导行为。

社会运动的强弱，区别就在于胜利者都是“集体领导”。他们会让出权力，而不是紧抓不放。他们为人们指明方向，而不是发号施令。运动的集体领导者不会为谁才是组织游行的功臣或者谁“拥有”捐赠者的名单，或者谁应该上CNN或福克斯新闻频道露脸而争论不休，他们会分享权力、权威和媒体的关注。在“为我们的生命游行”中，帕克兰的郊区学生们把话筒递给了城里的同学，因为后者每天在学校和街道都会面临了枪支暴力，就是集体领导的一种表现。

集体领导的运动在两个极端之间取得了平衡：它们既不是没有领导者，也不是由领导者主导的运动。

还记得占领华尔街运动吗？那些99%的人的支持者都采取了“无领导者”的扁平化治理结构，并且提出了20多项不同的要求，结果运动很快便烟消云散。另外一种极端情况是，一些运动往往过于倾向于由领导者主导：上层试图自上而下控制运动，结果扼制了运动的发展。

而集体领导的运动却不会这样做，他们会有意识地将权力交给基层，授权给地方的分会。他们将资金、媒体关注和培训工具分配给普通成员。他们鼓励问题的亲历者作为运动的领导者，比如幸存者、遇难者家属或者其他习惯于相关事业的人。当代取得胜利的所有社会运动，如控烟运动、扩大持枪权运动和LGBTQ群体婚姻平等运动等，之所以成功都是因为领导者采取了自下而上的方式。领导者更像是管弦乐队的指挥，而不是军队的指挥官或公司CEO。

以美国全国步枪协会（National Rifle Association）为例：它所采取的是倒金字塔领导结构，上方是协会成员，下方则是为他们提供支持的协会工作人员。虽然媒体关注的焦点是有钢铁般意志的全美步枪协会执行副总裁兼CEO韦恩·拉皮埃尔，但该协会真正的权力来自于其数百万的成员和成百上千位现场组织者，他们随时准备维护或者扩大持枪权，并用选票表达他们的主张。全美步枪协会不断在全国以及各地方培养和扩大支持者网络，并利用这些网络促进持枪权的发展，除了个别州外，在各州选举出对枪械友好的政治候选人。

虽然持枪权运动采取了集体领导的方式，但控枪运动却一直由领导者主导。不过这种情况也在发生变化。新出现的枪支改革机构，如在2014年纽敦悲剧发生后成立的“每座城镇都要维护枪支安全”（Everytown for Gun Safety）以及现在的#NeverAgain等，都在奋力追赶全美步枪协会。据“每座城镇都要维护枪支安全”的网站显示，其支持者在短短几年内迅速增加到超过400万，并在50个州建立了分会。该组织在积极阻止全美步枪协会的议程，包括推动在校园内禁枪，以及在国会反对待决的《隐蔽携带枪支互惠法案》等。

枪支改革最终变成了集体领导，这意味着它为自己博得了一个机会。（财富中文网）

注：本文作者Leslie Crutchfield是《变革如何发生：社会运动成败的秘密》（How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t）一书的作者，并在乔治城大学全球社会企业倡议行动任执行主任。

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

The students of Parkland, Fla., top Fortune’s 2018 list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, and the #MeToo movement clinches the third spot. Movements matter—today as much as ever. Individual crusaders when joined together can collectively topple corporate executives, undercut industries, upend elections, and wreak havoc on policy plans.

With the advent of social media and other democratizing technologies, much is written now about “new power”—how decentralized networks often triumph over more conventional, top-down models. But new power is old news to social change makers.

While every movement embodies collective leadership, not all campaigns are created equal. Some successfully coalesce around a common vision. Others fail to gain traction, spinning out of control or momentarily flaring bright, then fizzling.

Whether a movement succeeds is determined by how it is led. Any group of impassioned people can mount a protest or organize a march on Washington, but social change making at the end of the day is an act of leadership.

The difference between strong movements and weaker ones is that the winners are “leaderfull.” They give power away, rather than hoard it. They provide common direction, rather than commands. Instead of squabbling over who gets credit for organizing the march, or who “owns” the donor lists, or who appears on CNN or Fox News, leaderfull movement figureheads share power, authority, and the limelight. The suburban students from Parkland displayed leaderfullness when they passed the microphone at the March for Our Lives to urban peers who face daily gun violence in schools and streets.

Leaderfull movements strike a balance between two extremes; they are neither leaderless nor too leader-led.

Remember Occupy Wall Street? Those champions of the 99% had a flat “leaderless” governance structure and a list of more than 20 disparate demands—and soon faded. At the other extreme, some movements are too leader-led: The top dogs attempt to control the movement from above, suffocating it.

Leaderfull movements, on the other hand, purposely push power out to the grassroots, vesting authority in local chapters rather than controlling from the top. They disburse money, media attention, and training tools out to rank-and-file membership. They encourage people with the lived experience of the problem to lead—whether they’re survivors, victims’ families, or otherwise inured to the cause. All of the winning movements of modern times—such as tobacco control, gun rights expansion, and LGBTQ marriage equality—were successful because leaders embraced bottom-up approaches. Their top brass acted more like orchestra conductors than military commanders or corporate CEOs.

Take the National Rifle Association: Its leadership structure is an upside-down pyramid, with its members at the top and staff supporting them from underneath. While the media spotlights the NRA’s steel-willed EVP and CEO Wayne LaPierre, the real power of the NRA derives from its millions of members and hundreds of thousands of field organizers, always ready to defend or advance gun rights—and vote for them. The NRA nurtures and grows its networks of supporters at state and local levels, and has leveraged those networks to advance the gun rights cause and elect firearm-friendly political candidates in all but a handful of U.S. states.

While the gun rights movement has been leaderfull, gun control has historically been too leader-led. But that’s beginning to change. New gun reform groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, established in 2014 after the Newtown tragedy—and now #NeverAgain—are catching up to the NRA. In just a few years, Everytown’s supporters ballooned to more than 4 million (according to its website), and with chapters in all 50 states, it is aggressively working to block the NRA’s agenda—preventing guns in schools and on campuses, and fighting the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act pending in Congress.

Gun reform is finally becoming leaderfull, and that means it stands a fighting chance.

Leslie Crutchfield is the author of How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don‘t and executive director of Georgetown University’s Global Social Enterprise Initiative.