Contextual Leadership (1) - leadership styles
November 28, 2011 by Bert Verbeeke
Leadership training for Global Nomad staff - putting people in new positions demands training for them. Matthew and Lisa together with managing director are now studying leadership. It’s a great way to get to know each other better but moreover to know the best practices in leading others.
Cultural differences in study a book like 'Developing the leader within you' are obvious at the starting point. But digging a little deeper and go beyond the first layer of culture, we discover that being a leader has more to do with qualities of personhood than position.
In China many leaders are in a positional leadership position. But as we did our first studytogether - a Tibetan, Chinese and Dutch - we agreed that is really only the starting point: positional leadership.
Leading versus managing
Making difference between leading and managing is not so obvious as it might be in first instance. In John Maxwell’s book he makes the following statement:
Knowing how to do a job is the accomplishment of labor
Showing others is the accomplishment of a teacher
Making sure the work is done by others is the accomplishment of a manager
Inspiring others to do better work s the accomplishment of a leader
In a country where teachers and education are very much respected and seen as leading people to a higher goal, where positional leadership is respected rather than the qualities of the person and where labor is a synonym for hard work’, those statements not ring a bell in first instance.
Maybe the intended word for leader in China can be replaced by teacher. This title (teacher) is often given to skilled people or when a wise advise is given in a situation by somebody. The limitation of the word teacher is that it’s more related to a specific profession or segment of live.
With the local examples it seems that leaders are often limiting themselves to just doing their job. It’s the question where leaders are in the Maslow hierarchy of needs.
So we ended up that it is because of the few good examples around in daily live, that teachers are put on a higher pedestal than leaders. But the importance of a good leader is obvious.
My personal reflection on leadership…
John Maxwell in his book developing the leader in you, suggest that leadership is to influence people and to get followers. I have problems with the term 'influencing' what is my own limitation. Likely because influencing - in my perspective - is to close to manipulating. And the last I think is bad.
Personally, right now with my limited knowledge, I would define leadership as enabling people to go from current to desire. Current is the actual situation a people is in and desired is a specific target-vision of the leader for the people.
So the purpose is to move. The method is enabling the individual. The core quality is loving others.
This is the first blog post related to contextual leadership. Click here to read the next one: Contextual Leadership (2) - priorities and risk. To see all posts relating to contextual leadership, click here.
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