10 Areas
4. The Leader’s Character
Leadership is not authoritarianism
Informal authority accompanies informal leadership. Formal leadership comes with formal authority (or, it should; sometimes it doesn’t, and that causes problems). While authority inevitably accompanies leadership it does not constitute the essence of leadership. The more often a leader resorts to exercising Formal Authority to “make” people do the right thing, the more often there is a failure of leadership. Bossy people rely on the force of authority to make people comply with their wills. Leaders work to get people to want to do the right things. Some people want positions of Formal Authority so that they can make people do what they want. Others want Formal Authority just because they like being the one to tell everyone what to do or not do. Nobody with that motivation should ever be given a leadership role with Formal Authority over other people. Leadership is not about telling people what to do, using others as extensions of our own wills; it is about serving a purpose beyond ourselves. While leaders seek to understand the people they lead, a leader does more than just seek to facilitate the will of the group. An important part of leadership includes being in touch with those you lead in order to be familiar with their working conditions, personal lives, range of emotions and current attitudes. We do this in large part because we are human and it is natural and good to build healthy relationships. Leadership requires the skills to build healthy relationships. It requires us to know and be known by those we work with. The work of leadership cannot be performed well (or at all) without the knowledge of and the experience of others that comes with healthy relationships. Leadership is not facilitated, direct democracy
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