The ‘Right View’ Approach to Collaborative Leadership

Abstract

To achieve the objectives and missions in various charitable endeavours, non-profit and philanthropic practitioners must excel in a range of skills and competencies required to collaborate with a network of stakeholders including government agencies, private sectors, and community sectors. Among these core skills and competencies, this research argues that the ability to implement a 'Right View' approach could contribute to trust building, conflict resolution, and genuine communication. This notion of Right View (samma ditthi) has been explained in details in the Buddhist teachings: Right View is not attached or fixated on any views or identities. It is an insightful understanding of reality as it is. It contributes to leadership in collaborative governance because it empowers leaders to transcend beyond polarities of identities, values, and ideas. It facilitates shared experience, mutual respect and consensus building. For non-profit and philanthropic leaders who are motivated and guided not by quantifiable financial parameters but a wide scope of qualitative values, applying the Right View approach is even more relevant because values are not easy to measure, analyse, or compare on the same basis. This study expounds on how leaders could establish complete perspectives of other stakeholders, remove biases, and hence allow for truly win-win collaboration. This research first analyses the meaning of the Right View. It then illustrates the significance of Right View in developing mutual trust and openness critical to genuine communication and collaboration. It further explains how wrong views, or even any fixation on views, could be divisive and confrontational. This study concludes with examples on how Right View could be adopted as a new practical model by leaders in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors to strengthen collaborative governance.