Not long ago I sat in the office of Dwight
as the CEO of a multinational corporation. He, my partner Dr.
Alicia Fortinberry, and I were discussing a
culture change program which we had been running for the company's senior and
mid-level management.
"I've learned something from this
exercise," he said, gazing out over Lower
Manhattan. "I'm not really here to tell people what to
do. For the most part they know. I'm here to be a guide and coach and to make them feel
safe enough to do it. To encourage them to relate to each other in ways that makes doing
the right thing possible." It was a very
profound remark and has implications that go to
the very heart of what leadership is all about.
Every kind of human leadership involves either guiding or directing people. A good
corporate leader both guides and, when necessary, directs. This may seem a statement of
the obvious: a kind of "Of course. So?" The
point is that, in my experience of 20 years of
training leaders and as an executive coach, I have found many leaders who are good
at `directing'; far fewer who are experts at `guiding.'
In the organizational sphere there are many theories about how a leader
should behave. These are encapsulated in phrases such as `transactional
leadership,' `transformational leadership,'
`laissez-faire leadership,' `servant leadership,'
`charismatic leadership,' `bureaucratic
leadership,' `democratic leadership,' and so on. Each
one implies a different relationship between the leader and those he or she leads. |
