On Leading Well

Year: 2010

  • What Is Shared Leadership?

    Leadership is hard work. Good leadership is really hard work. Today’s dynamic, rapidly changing knowledge economy provides an ever-shifting landscape that requires multiple perspectives to navigate well.

    Exit the know-it-all, do-it-all leader.

    Enter the self-aware, in-touch connector that can share leadership by pulling people, resources and ideas together to get the job done.

    What is shared leadership? Marshall Goldsmith describes it this way in an excellent post: “Shared leadership involves maximizing all of the human resources in an organization by empowering individuals and giving them an opportunity to take leadership positions in their areas of expertise. With more complex markets increasing the demands on leadership, the job in many cases is simply too large for one individual. Sharing leadership isn’t easy, but it’s definitely possible, and in many cases, highly successful.”

    Goldsmith suggests ways to share leadership and maximize talent. Here are a few:

    • Give power away to the most qualified individuals to strengthen their capabilities.
    • Define the limits of decision-making power.
    • Cultivate a climate in which people feel free to take initiative on assignments.
    • Give qualified people discretion and autonomy over their tasks and resources and encourage them to use these tools.
    • Don’t second guess the decisions of those you have empowered to do so.

    As leaders, our job is to constantly move those people our organizations touch from strangers to acquaintances, from acquaintances to friends, and from friends to partners in our common mission. Sharing leadership usually provides the best pathway to true partnership.

    How are you learning to share leadership?

  • What is Servant Leadership?

    More and more conversations revolve around the type of leadership required in our rapidly changing global culture. Many cite the “new skills” needed in this environment, such as trust-building, empathy, networking, and the ability to empower others. Though few will come out and label this package as such, it seems to me we’re really talking about servant leadership.

    If that is the type of leadership in great demand today, what exactly is servant leadership?

    Robert Greenleaf coined the term as he sought to answer this question in his 1977 classic, Servant Leadership:

    The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such, it will be a later choice to serve – after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

    The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?

    Greenleaf’s insights echo the voice of the greatest servant leader who ever lived. In addressing his followers immediately after a nasty internal power struggle, Jesus had this to say:

    “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:42-44)

    Jesus laid it out pretty clearly. There are normal leaders whose focus is all about who has authority and is in charge. These are a dime a dozen. Then there are those who have made the mindshift from “over/under” to “among” – great leaders who seek to serve. And for those who aspire to be the greatest? They must become slaves of all.

    How do you define, or better yet, practice servant leadership?

  • Worth A Thousand Words