How To Lead Without Fear, Intimidation or Authority

Molly’s employees are fiercely loyal to her, everyone respects her, and they are highly successful as individuals and a team. By contrast, other leaders in the organization report that their people seem disengaged, they experience high staff turnover, and their results are often very disappointing.

So, what does Molly do that other leaders don't? To begin with, Molly regularly reminds her team members of the purpose of their work. And she knows that she's a role model for her team, so she demonstrates integrity in all of her working relationships.

She sets high expectations, but "walks the walk" to demonstrate the standards that she expects. Molly enjoys the perks of being a transformational leader and, it allowed her team to help their organization achieve its objectives and fulfill its purpose.

Effective leadership is the most critical factor for organizational success in the 21st century, and the old pyramid structure won’t suffice, according to Sheri Nasim, president, and CEO of the San Diego-based Center for Executive Excellence. Companies that want to continue to grow need to embrace transformational leadership, she said during a presentation at the recent The Future of Work conference.

Millennials are changing the world of work, and if you don't accept the fact that in the next 10 - 15 years our workplace will be completely different, your organization will get left behind. The pyramid structure of the 20th century according to Erin Binney worked when manufacturing companies employed most of the workers, and the employment contract was strictly transactional. In this system, employees came to work, did their jobs, collected wages and went home.

Leading by fear and intimidation was the order of the day. There was a physical and emotional distance between leaders and employees. Leaders sat in offices removed from the manufacturing floor and viewed employees only as a cost of labor, not as individuals with lives outside of work.

Unfortunately, many companies are still operating with this ideology where communication is stagnated; silos are the order of the day and leaders have a vested interest in building bureaucracy and protecting the status quo to keep their jobs, even though this isn’t necessarily in the best interests of the company.

Many organizations have changed and modified their culture, changed the style of their leadership, etc. because they recognized that this generation is completely different from the baby boomers who believed in a job for life. A lot of companies now are purpose and values-driven, more involved in societal issues, moved away from the annual performance reviews, developed and implement policies that strive to provide a work-life balance, flexible work hours and a host of other things that genuinely seek the interest and development of their employees.

Leaders of the future must change their style of leadership to give their organization any chance of competing and operating in this technologically driven world where the speed of change is unprecedented in the history of our existence on this planet.

How do you get your team to go the extra mile, consider the 4Is:

Individual Influence

Transformational leaders are capable of transmitting a message to each person on their team.

Inspiration

These leaders are capable of leveraging the meaning of goals and tasks. Their emotions are magnetic, touching the most buried feeling inside of their people.

Intellectual Stimulation

They question old ways of doing things, imparting new perspectives and most importantly they challenge the status-quo.

Individual Treatment

Transformational leaders develop each employee individually, with full credibility. They understand their employees’ needs, and they genuinely care about them.

Molly‘s leadership provided a great example of what great leadership can accomplish without fear, intimidation or authority. When you understand that leadership is about people, it's about inspiring people to believe that the impossible is possible, it is about developing and building people to perform at heights they never imagine and it's about making a positive impact on your community, your company, your department, your employees and by extension the world.

When you recognized that leadership is all about people, your company will be among the best in the world.

My new book, Inspirational Leadership Quotes, Become Inspired to Make A Difference was written to help leaders believe in themselves, to believe in their gifts, to believe in their team and most importantly to help inspire the next generation of leaders to become great. It is my sincere hope that these quotes touch you the same way it touched my inner core. Really excited to share these quotes with you. Coming soon.