The use, and abuse, of power in organizations

This reminds me of what John Maxwell calls the "Levels of Leadership". Positional Leadership is the lowest level, and is basically, "you do what I tell you to do because you work for me, or I outrank you". I'd hardly call that leadership! However, due to many managers not embracing a continuous learning mind-set or a lens of abundance, they cease to evolve their leadership skills. This means they become stagnant in their understanding how to lead people and things like emotional intelligence, influence, collaboration, and SITLE are totally foreign concepts. Leadership is about influence, not authority. If you have to play the "because I said so" card, I'd argue you've already lost. I think the first step in facilitating meaningful change is fostering a culture of self-awareness. If a leader isn't teachable, then your chances of getting them to see there is a better way are probably close to zero. However, if you can get them to realize that reaching a management role is the start of the leadership journey, not the destination, then there's hope. In Tim Grover's book Relentless, he talks about the mindset of Michael Jordan. Here's a guy that the term GOAT was designed for. Nobody was better, nobody had more raw talent, and nobody could match him mentally. If anyone was in a position to coast, it was him. However, Grover states that he was the hardest working professional athlete he'd ever seen. First in the gym, last one gone, always mentally and emotionally dialed in. Nobody prepared, studied film, worked out harder. The result was that a gifted athlete became a legend. Having raw talent and capability is great. Getting the job is awesome. Stopping there is shameful. We need less managers and more GOATS.

BG, I wish I could say that every organization understood the transition between the agreement between an employee and an organization. The employee agrees to do a job well in exchange for being treated as an individual and compensated as such. Sometimes I see leaders treating employees who challenge the status quo as the problem instead of the solution finder. Leaders become so busy fighting fires or dabbling in their day to day that they sometimes forget to be a servant to the people they lead. Listening and asking questions for understanding becomes too much, a hassle. Leading is really in the simplest form, serving others. People are people, we are people. What do we as people appreciate and value in our leaders and organization? Most people want the same thing. To be treated with respect, transparency, grace given when needed, someone to walk beside them to challenge them and guide them outside their boundaries, and lastly compensated fairly. I find when you have a servant leader at the top, it trickles down to the rest of the organization. The wolves don’t last.

BG, everything you wrote is true. How far you want to take it will determine how you continue to develop it. For instance my experience 0ver a 36 year time frame in an evolving industry saw many leadership changes and styles. The evolving industry called for evolving skill sets. How leadership “led” through the changes varied by leader. Some were approachable, others were not. Some had an open door policy but a closed ear. Clearly the goal of any company is to hire and maintain high quality personnel, however, the truth is corporate America seems to have forgotten that the key component to creating a sustainable competitive advantage, even a competitive advantage is by keeping highly skilled workers in their jobs for a long time. The idea of outsourcing has undermined that competitive advantage and in fact that is probably one contributing factor to the fact that companies that led their industry in cust sat now rank near the bottom. If you will call me I can elaborate more. One of the bottom line takeaways is your article has the feel of trying to help leadership hire and keep people but another factor is people have to want to stay. So that individual goal factors in as well.