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Sources of Confusion On Leadership
Business Professors Speak
A former admiral in the Navy, Grace Hooper, said it well, “You can't manage men into battle. You manage things, you lead people.”
While the military services are clear terms of their definition of leadership, the management schools across the world are not. You hear it all the time among the professors. They always talk about, “managing people.”
This implies the leadership and management of the same. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Few people like to be managed, most people would love to be led; for we lead people and we manage resources. If you want to manage people in the same way that you would manage time or money, no problem. However, most people resent being managed, but if you lead them, they will follow you anywhere. So what is leadership?
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| One can see in this picture why authority gets confused with what leaders do. Notice the many symbols of authority surrounding Napolean. |
Many Confuse Authority With Leadership
One of the problems when it comes to understanding leadership is that many people confuse authority and obedience to authority with leadership. Humans are social animals. You might say is programmed into our genetics and into our culture that we will follow the instructions from those in almost unconscious way when someone exercises authority.
An example of this is when a police officer pulls you over. If you think about it, here is a perfect stranger someone issuing instructions we automatically obey. to has the ability to exercise force, even deadly force. Of course most of the time, the punishment is not so severe. It consists of a fine or perhaps even a warning. However, what is interesting is that this person is able to exercise authority and most of us submit and comply with that individual. Will think about this example, we see that at influence was exercised, but it doesn't seem to be the exercise of leadership.
The exercise of authority is necessary for individuals to work together with others. It has been described basically as a relationships in which one person is dominant and the other person is submissive. Or it could be a dominant individual with submissive members in a group. Of course, leaders should feel free to use authority when it makes sense. What helps
Positional Power is Often Confused With Leadership
The popular media often confusions the position power with true leadership. It assumed that the alpha female or male is the leader of the tribe. If one only looks at position, then this is the case. However, just because you occupy the chair, doesn’t mean you exercise anything more than the authority inherent granted by the position.
Another element which is oftentimes confused with our understanding of what is leadership, is position power in a dominance hierarchy or if we are furring to organizations, the organizational chart.
What Leadership is Not
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What symbolizes management is different than what symbolizes leadership. The universal symbol of the modern manager is the business suite and tie. Image by Paul Goyette, Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike, 2.0 |
Leadership is Not Management.
These are actually quite different. Management is something we do when we are focused on a task—typically if involves some type of work. We manage time, resources and money. However, what leadership is about is people. And people don't like to be managed. People want to be led. It seems, most people prefer to follow. So leaders have followers while managers have subordinates.
What Leadership Is
Leadership is about Power.
This is basic, a characteristic of all leaders. The make some type of change happen, whether that change is something related to behavior or thinking. A classic example is a parent telling a child what to do. When a child is very young, they follow instructions very well. When they get older? Parental authority gets weaker and it helps to now how to persuade.
Leadership Requires Persuasion
"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success." - Explorer Ernest Shackleton
Persuasion is the use of language to change thinking, attitudes and sometimes even values. All great sales people persuade—have learned how to persuade. Often we are more persuasive than we think. I often have students do an exercise called the "persuasive pitch." The are simple to pick a friend and engage in a persuasive conversation, one that causes a change in thinking. One simple constructs a persuasive appeal using a set of statements that appeal to logic, emotion or motivation. Children soon discover that if they want something they can simple ask. But this may not work so they resort to other means, but typically lack skillful means. However, that doesn't mean they don't try, they can always use tantrum or a good cry to change a reluctant parents behavior.
True Leadership Requires The Ability To Motivate
Motivation differs from persuasion in a very subtle way—the focus is on behavior, not thinking. Many who study psychology, believe that behavior is easier to change than most attitudes or beliefs. In fact, there are a number of theories that describe why even words can change behavior. On the behavioral side, there are three: classical conditioning, operant conditioning and vicarious learning or modeling. Which brings us to what one can do to practice developing into a great leader. To do that, one can read, and read, and read. This can turn you into a leadership scholar. But to do something in the real world, you will need to test your leadership in different situations.
What are Good Leadership Tests?
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Some situations are better tests of what leadership is than others. To get good at influence, you have to limit your use of authority, status, wealth and position. Image by: Yann. GNU Free Documentation License 1.5 |
If you are going to improve you ability to lead, one needs to develop a series of "tests" you can use. These are not the paper kind or the online assessments we have all done. These are situations that require the use of influence.
Appeal To The Others Selfless Nature
Lets say that you are a politician and you promise people a tax cut. Is that a true test of leadership? How about convincing them to pay more taxes? Is that a better test? Most of us what say the second case is better than the first? What makes it different? In one case, the appeal is to selfishness, a condition that sociobiologists believe is in-built in the "selfish gene." So appealing to selfish interests is not such as good test, unless you are talking to a saint or a Buddhist Boddhisatva.
Exert Influence on Higher Authority
Obvious to authority is a one-way process. We follow the instructors of higher authority automatically. But influencing higher authority requires leadership, sometimes inaccurately called, "boss management." Let's say you want a day off and you work for a typical task driven, get it down now, never miss a deadline boss. Its obviously going to take more than a "pretty please" to get your way. Exert influence on peers
Compliance is good, conformity is better
We often comply but don't agree. A smoker complies with no smoking signs even though secretly they would like to light up. It works, but less well than conformity. With conformity, the action and thinking are congruent. In this case, one agrees that one should not smoke, so one does not. Take another example. Let's say you have a friend to smokes and you want them to stop. This requires a dual focus. You might get the person to comply so they will sneak cigarettes outside of your presence. This points out the weakness of compliance. It only works in some situations, not others.
Try Building Skills
Skills are easy to build when the other is highly motivated. However, when the motivation to try something new is low, you have a test of leadership. Not only does one have to get the person energized, but one has to teach and coach. Yes, coaching requires leadership. It's one of the reason the good ones get paid handsomely. It's just not that easy.
Leadership is About Change
Change occurs at many levels. One can change behavior, change beliefs, change attitudes. But not all changes are equally easy to make. Breaking a habit is very difficult, changing a core belief, is almost impossible, and bad attitudes such as prejudices or stereotypes can a long time to change, when they change at all.
Art Credits
- Napolean on the Imperial Throne by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
- José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior (1850-1899) Girl with a Book
- Madonna and Child by Hans Holbien The Younger (1498-1543)
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