But no one has a monopoly on good ideas, so we need to see leadership as a rapidly shifting, transient ability to have a brief impact on people, rather than as an ongoing position or role. The future success of organizations that depend on innovation will be driven by the ideas of front-line knowledge workers.
The great benefit of this shift in power is that those at the front-line will feel massively empowered when organizations start to recognize them as their real leaders.
This shift in perspective can only lead to more innovation, greater employee engagement and better talent retention. The value of citing King, Gandhi, Jack Welch and Al Gore in this context is to show that bottom-up leadership is not an isolated case of having a leadership impact on a group without being in charge of it.
The conventional business model of leadership has blinded us to other forms of leadership. Bottom-up leadership can also be called thought leadership and it can be shown top-down and sideways as well as bottom-up. Consider the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr and Mahatma Gandhi where the focus is not on their street followers but on their target audience — their respective governments and the general population.
What do these leaders have in common? Certainly not their style. King was a brilliant orator. Gandhi was a quiet, peaceful person who believed in passive resistance. The critical trait they shared was courage — the courage to challenge the status quo, even at great personal risk. In addition, they both had a drive to improve the world around them, to find a better way.
Compare the leadership of King and Gandhi to that of the front-line knowledge worker who promotes a new product to senior management. The risk that this thought leader takes is potential rejection, ridicule or loss of job. Again, courage is the key trait.
In fact, their influencing style could be quite obnoxious provided they can make a convincing case for their proposal. This shows that social skills are not essential to show such leadership, however much having them might be icing on the cake. There may be some common, if not entirely universal, traits required to be a chief executive.
Intelligence, social skills and emotional stability are likely to be important. But, leadership viewed as promoting a better way is not about rising to the top of the pile. It can range from the very heroic end of the spectrum, as in the case of King and Gandhi, to very ordinary, everyday suggestions to do something different.
Suppose you are a junior office boy in an accounting practice. In this context, how much courage would it take to suggest to your boss that the office needs new pencil sharpeners?
Taking a stand on such an issue may require some courage, but your life is not at risk. In another case, suppose you decide to champion a new product to your colleagues. The bottom line is that shifting our concept of leadership to the promotion of a better way means that there are no special traits required universally. It all depends on the receptivity of your target audience and the risks associated with challenging the status quo. Of course, if you want to question fundamental values, like the supposed right to drive gas-guzzling cars or carry guns, then you will need more courage than what it takes to suggest buying new pencil sharpeners.
But this proves the point: leadership thus reinvented is totally relative to the situation. Some courage may always be required but it is pretty minimal in some situations. The ability to influence is considered an essential characteristic of great leadership. Influence assumes that a leader knows what needs to be done and how best to influence the behaviour of others to make it happen.
Organisations, however, are composed of members who exist within dynamic, interactive systems of exchange. To assume that one individual knows the answer discounts the potential for collective, generative and collaborative agency to influence relevant outcomes. Instead, members of the organisation or system often help leaders to find directions out of confusion and uncertainty. The key here is for leadership to focus on process and allow its members to determine outcomes.
For those who can hold this context, desired futures will exceed expectations. To learn more about the future trends of leadership, stay tuned for the next installment of… lead before you leap. So I left it. Thanks for spotting and commenting! Now we have the benefit of a new concept, haha. Share Tweet.
The Xaverian Weekly. Justin Trudeau. Malala Yousafzai. Barack Obama. Oprah Winfrey. Pope Francis. The Dalai Lama. Martin Luther King Jr. Nelson Mandela. Mar 23, Blood Clinic leads to Controversy. Mar 10, Representatives Elected.
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