The Silent Election of Leadership

How do you lead?

Story update 1/14/2010: We substituted the word "empathize" for "sympathize."

Many organizations struggle with leadership, often puzzling over why their management techniques don’t seem to induce contribution and collaboration from their associates. The practice of management is separate and distinct from that of leadership, and so both practices require unique approaches and perspectives. While the practice of management can create some visually identifiable order, and has merit for the purposes of supervision and performance monitoring, it lacks the genuine finesse and interpersonal skills required by a leader. To drive contribution and collaboration, a leader must earn their associates’ trust, and be silently elected as an influential force.

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Comments

Sympathy or Empathy?

Hello Mr. Lyall:

How can one by sympathetic to all involved and maintain trust? I think you mean a leader must be empathetic. To be a leader, must one feel and think alike with the followers or must one understand and be aware of the followers thoughts?

From Meriam webster:

Sympathy: inclination to think or feel alike : emotional or intellectual accord b : feeling of loyalty : tendency to favor or support
3 a : the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another

Empathy: : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

Great Summary!

Leadership is very misunderstood by most in management. They don't understand that referent and expert power bases cause people to follow. They generally reach for legitimate and coercive power bases and wonder why they end up pushing people instead of leading. Excellent summary!

Reply To Comments Thus Far

Thanks for the comments thus far.

Regarding the sympathy vs empathy comment:
I absolutely agree with you, and actually that revision had been noticed and changed, but not innitially reflected in the version of the article I submitted. My sincere apologies. The posting of the article now reflects this revision. I do appreciate the comment very much, it shows that you not only read the words, but did so with a thoughtful and insighful mind for details. I hope that everybody who reads the article will take the time to not only read, but think about what is written, as I can see both commenters have. Thanks again.

Angelo Lyall
Kaizen Solutions Inc.
www.kaizenimprovement.ca