Leadership Like
White-Water Canoeing
by Brent Filson
Although world business is undergoing historic changes, the
prevailing view of what constitutes business leadership is stuck in
the past. Generally, business leaders view leadership as an
order-giving process. The word "leadership" itself comes from old
Norse root meaning "to make go." Many leaders believe that they must
"make" people go by ordering them to do things.
But today's new business realities are requiring new kinds of
leadership, leadership that has very little to do with order giving.
Organizations are more competitive when leaders don't make others go
but instead have those others make themselves go when employees are
not ordered to do tasks but instead are in the frame of mind and heart
that they want to do those tasks. That "want to" is the cutting edge
of competitiveness.
Order-leadership in business has its roots in the beginnings of
the Industrial Revolution. "Order" comes from a Latin root meaning to
arrange threads in a weaving woof. The captains of the Revolution
dealt with the relatively uneducated country people who flocked to
their factories by ordering them where, how, and when to work. The
most efficient and effective production methods resulted from workers
being "ordered" or ranked like threads in the woof of production
lines. Refined and empowered by the Victorian commercial culture,
with its patriarchal power structure and strong links to Prussian
military organization, the culture of the order-giver leader reached
its zenith in the United States after World War II.
During the post-war years, many U.S. businesses were like ocean
liners plowing through relatively calm seas, their leaders, like liner
captains and mates, running things by getting orders from superiors,
giving orders to subordinates and making sure that those orders were
carried out.
But today, with competition increasing dramatically, with the
volume and velocity of information multiplying, with the pyramidal
structures of order-giving businesses flattening, leaders need skills
not akin to ocean liner piloting but white-water canoeing. Order
leadership founders where lines of authority are blurred, information
proliferates, markets rapidly changing, and employees are highly
skilled and educated.
A new kind of leadership, a new vision of leadership is needed
leadership based on the principle that the leader doesn't make others
go by ordering them about but instead has them go by creating an
organizational environment in which they prompt themselves to go.
This new leadership is: 1. Motivational. 2. Action-based. 3.
Results-driven.
Motivational: Leaders do nothing more important than get
results. But leaders can't get results themselves. They need the
people they lead to get results. And the best way for them to get
results is not to order them but to motivate them to take action that
produces results. However, the English language misconstrues
motivation. English describes the act of motivation as something one
person does to another person. Leaders can't motivate anybody to do
anything. We communicate the people themselves motivate. They
motivate themselves. Only they can motivate themselves. The
motivators and the "motivatees" are the same people. We engage in the
new leadership when we recognize that we are motivating people to get
results only when we set up an environment in which they are actively
motivating themselves.
Action-based: A key aspect of the new leadership lies in the
first two letters of the word motivation. Those letters "mo" are
also found in the words "motion," "momentum," "motor," "mobile," etc.
The words denote action physical action. Motivation isn't what
people think or feel but physically do. To engage in the new
leadership, leaders must constantly be challenging others to take
physical action that leads to results.
Results-oriented: Motivated people are useless to a business.
People taking action are useless to a business. Only those people who
get results are useful. The thing is that people who are motivated
and taking action are more likely to get results. Leaders must have a
passion to achieve results. Not just results but more results,
faster results. They must permeate the culture of their organization
with a more results
faster esprit.
Clearly, many order leaders have a passion for results. But as
to the new leadership, how people get results is as important as their
getting those results. To get more-results- faster, the order leader
demands that people run faster in the organizational gerbil wheel.
But there is a limit to how fast and hard people can work before they
burn out. The new leader, however, recognizes that to achieve more
results faster on a continuous basis that people can't simply speed
up, work harder, and be straight-jacketed by tight controls. They
must replenish their spirit and energies. They must slow down to
develop and employ powerful processes, and they must challenge others
to lead for results. The new leader's effectiveness is not measured
so much by his/her actions but by the effectiveness of the leadership
activities he/she challenges others to engage in.
The recent emergence of interlocking global markets has
stimulated a new vision of world commerce, a vision of a single global
playing field. Leaders must match their business activities to the
demands of that vision. But a corresponding new vision of leadership
has not emerged.
Stuck with an outmoded vision of order leadership, today's
leaders are not seizing the full array of opportunities before them.
When they begin to establish leadership that is not order-driven but
is instead motivational, action-based and results-oriented, the world
might not beat a path to their door but more importantly, they will
beat paths to the doorsteps of the world.
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2005 The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE
LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE
GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson
Leadership Group, Inc. and has worked with thousands of leaders
worldwide during the past 20 years helping them achieve sizable
increases in hard, measured results. Sign up for his free leadership
ezine and get a free guide, "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at
www.actionleadership.com