The Differentiation of Leadership and Power

Oftentimes, leadership is confused with power. Holding "power" or authority over others through position - or inspiring fear as a means of motivation - is not authentic leadership. Below are just a few of the forms of differentiation of leadership and power, and how leaders may use the opportunity afforded by their title to be a force for positive organizational change.

Differentiation of Leadership and Power: Creating Resonance

One factor that cuts across all styles of relating to people is the ability to create resonance with groups. We have all had that feeling when a group of us were "pulling as one" or "in the flow."

In Dan Goldman's work on Primal Leadership he talks about six different approaches to leadership. These are visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pace-setting and commanding.

The first four - visionary, coaching, affiliative and democratic - create the kind of resonance that boosts performance. The other two - pace-setting and commanding - actually create dissonance and should be used with caution. This is not to say that pace-setting and commanding don't get results; they do. However, you will find that they are not sustainable. The results tend to spike upwards and then fall back off. They require continued input of energy - asserting one's power - to continue the results.

Commanding from a place of power can create organizational dissonance.

The most effective leader will embody all six of these styles at different times. Learning the ability to "flex" is one of the most critical parts of leadership.

Differentiation of Leadership and Power: Building Energy

As a leader, your job isn't to have power and wield it; your job is to build the energy and commitment within the organization to move in a constructive fashion. Your job here is to get clear about your organization's defining values, core mission and vision and to get into alignment (the wants, values, and quality criteria of the organization's major stakeholders) as a leadership force as much as possible around these issues. Then, you recognize that your leadership group represents a microcosm of the organization and is simply a sample of the overall level of alignment or misalignment in the larger system. Your role is then to carry that dialogue back to the organization to spread that wisdom and renewal through the entire system. Then, you will begin to truly feel the drive for change from the rest of the system.

Differentiation of Leadership and Power: Setting an Emotional Tone

Leaders have a primordial role in any given group. They are responsible for group emotions. Interestingly, people in leadership positions sometimes vehemently disagree with this. But those individuals have also been leaders of troubled systems with a number of problems. Most of these people were looking outside themselves and were convinced that they just needed better people around them. However, they had the direction of causality backwards. It is clear through research in social systems that the leader's emotional state translates directly into the overall feelings of the environment. At this level, a leader is responsible for spreading enthusiasm and clearing toxic waste from the system.

If we think about a higher purpose of leadership, setting an emotional tone where creativity is safe and supported is much more important for a system to have generative capabilities.