making sense of leadership

I sittin' here in my study staring at my bookcase. For the most part, many of the books are about leadership. There's "R E Lee on Leadership", "The Ascent of a Leader", a book by John Maxwell, Coach K, Rudy Guliani, and Truett Cathy and on and on. I think leadership may be the most over explored and under understood topic around. Have U ever wondered why we have some much written and presented on leadership yet it may be the greatest crisis of our time. The upcoming Presidential campaign is largely about leadership, but hardly anybody gets it.

 
see what I mean


Do we really know much about leadership? Can we only recognize it from someone's results. No one thought much about Coach K's leadership until he won a bunch of titles. Was he not a great leader before he was soooo successful? The debate on whether leaders are born or made gets lots of discussion but little resolution. How do you make sense of LEADERSHIP?

He's the skinny on my take of leadership. First of all, leaders at any level do primarily two things: (1) make decisions about how to win (strategy) in a "hostile environment" and (2) influence peeps (followers) to act in accordance with that strategy. Developing strategy is a whole big area I'll leave for later, but I will offer a brief perspective on the second point of leadership.

For any peep that has the responsibility for the behavior of others, he/she has only two options: the behavior of others can be induced or it can be inspired. The choice must be made for each behavior. Thus a leader has to do both and choose which approach to take depending on the behavior in question.

Inducing behavior requires setting up structures of exchange for the behavior. These include things like policies, rules, rewards, job descriptions, and other forms of controls. This approach is based on Social Exchange theory which states that peeps will exchange behavior for extrinsic benefits as long as there remains equilibrium in the exchange. A leader's ability to induce behavior comes from one's positional power over another the follower's desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain for themself. These types of leadership actions are normally called managing.

Inspiring behavior requires relationships. Here the leader must invade the intrinsics of another so that the follower determines from within that the result of the behavior is meaningful, purposeful, or enjoyable. Inspiration comes from the leader's personal power (referent or expert) over the follower and involves establishing a vision that is shared by the followers, thereby gaining commitment of followers to something beyond themselves.

Let me illustrate. As a professor I have responsibility to influence student behavior. One such behavior is attending class. I decided that I should induce that behavior. Its easier and I have a better likelihood of success. Thus, I set up rewards and punishment for class attendance that are sufficiently salient to get students to come to class (I experience an 85-90% attendance rate). I also desire that the students ATTEND to class when they are there. This is more difficult to induce unless I gave pop quizes every 10 minutes. I find i must inspire students to listen and engage the topics. This is much more difficult, especially since building relationships with 25 - 35 students is not easy. To inspire I "invade" their intrinsics for learning. Make it fun, appeal to its purpose, help them create a vision, and provide regular feedback to each to encourage them and show that i care. I must show them my own passion for the topics, that is contagious. THIS IS WHAT WE NORMALLY CALL LEADERSHIP.  

In summary, both types of actions are required by the one responsible for others' behavior. The trick is knowing which behaviors to induce (and how) and which to inspire (and how). You won't read this approach in any book on leadership but its a condensed conclusion I have come to from both being a leader for many years and studying it's moving parts.

I hope this helps --- it's certainly worth pondering .....