Intentional Influence

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jun2009/ca2009065_772331.htm

Great article that is direct about the need to influence with intent if you want to lead. We can go round in circles looking at leadership models and reflecting on what strategy to adopt. Without the power, ability and intent to influence it's very hard to lead anything.

We've spent over 20 years at Common Purpose, as a non-profit helping people lead change, and a few years ago we settled on a persons ability to lead beyond authority as the key thing. At it's heart it means understanding how to influence without reverting to your position of power.

The thing I would add though is that you can't influence effectively without resetting your radar. You have to see and understand what people and organisations very different to you, and your training, are thinking.

For more see http://www.commonpurpose.org/home/books/beyondauthority.aspx with a note from David Bell - Chair of the FT

Leadership and change

I've always thought of leadership as being linked to change. But have realised over time this is an assumption which is not always shared. It appears to me things and people change purely by our interaction with them (or if we choose not to they are changed by our absence), and as such even if we believe leadership to be about keeping things stable and maintaining the status quo then it will still require a change of something to keep it that way.

At the heart of this lies a twist in perception. We need to consider if we are actors in society or passive recipients of what goes on around us? Stephen Covey describes this as the habit of proactivity, the first stage of becoming an effective person. Within his concept he talks of the need to become aware of the relationship between stimulus and response. Once a person has done this they can begin to exercise choice. Hence they become active (and in Covey's eyes, effective).

The ability a person has to respond to any given situation could also be seen as their ability to lead. The greater their ability to respond then the better a leader they are. i.e. the more able they are to exercise choice over their future.

Eventually everyone can accept they have some choice over things around them, that they can improve how they communicate, how they bring people together to get things done etc. What I find is a greater objection to the idea that leadership and change are linked is when the stakes and issues are bigger and harder to solve, further away from home and further outside the area of my authority and direct influence.