Definitions
Leadership in the broader sense takes place almost all of the time and everywhere. We take part in conversations, we influence people, we persuade friends to follow a certain path with us…
This document however is concerned with the leadership of people in organisations.
As a rule we come to leadership as a result of our expertise in our professional field. The challenging and exciting thing about the leadership role is that the focus is now on two new and very different areas: the world of our staff with everything that goes with it, and the world of results, outputs, budgets, in short the world of the organisation.
These two areas are common to the most well-known definitions of leadership (cf. Neuberger, 2002):
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The task of the manager is to deploy staff so that they achieve the organisation’s desired results.
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From here we can define four leadership areas (the continents)
1. At the centre is the role of manager
Myself as manager, with a certain understanding of myself and my role, with a more or less clear job and mandate
2. The staff, for whose professional existence and development I am largely
responsible
The staff, with their often very different personalities, characteristics, individual sensibilities, their values and motivations, influences and histories
3. The organisation – for which I have taken on a responsibility for direction and results and naturally
The organisation, which defines the results to be achieved and which combines the contribution of my department into a package acceptable to the customer/market, with all its rules, systems, (in)formal circles and power and micro-political structures
4. Myself as a human being and an individual behind the management role
We are not born into the world as managers. The starting point for development into a manager is our individual self with all our influences, values, attitudes, talents and abilities, communication skills, our self, time and work management.
The key elements of leadership are the manager him or herself, the staff, the organisation/company and one’s own personality (I).
The main functions of leadership result from the links between the key points/players:
1. Transpersonal leadership (from I to manager)
2. Transactional leadership (from staff to company)
3. Interpersonal leadership (from manager to staff)
4. And transformational leadership (from manager to company)
From I to manager (the countries)
Transpersonal leadership:
Development from person to manager takes place via one’s own personality with all its communication characteristics, via one’s capacity for work, time and self-management, via the clear basic understanding of leadership, via the management task or mandate to being a manager.
From staff to results
Transactional leadership:
The core task is the leadership of staff through the deduction and visualisation of the principal objectives from the job, the breakdown of the objectives into tasks and their delegation, the management and facilitation of tasks to find the best solutions uo to the reaction to positive as well as negative deviations (feedback).
From manager to staff
Interpersonal leadership:
The basis of the performance process is having sound and robust working relationships, the building and maintenance of trust, the maintenance or reinstatement of motivation and satisfaction with work, the constant development of the staff’s capacities and skills and the cultivation of a feeling of team spirit.
From manager to results
Transformational leadership:
The role of the manager in the company is to be the entrepreneur within the enterprise, who constantly adjusts and renews his mandate. Development of effectiveness: what will the recipients of my/our outputs want tomorrow? How satisfied are they? Continuous improvement: how can the efficiency of workflows and processes increased? How does the division position itself within the company? How good are our relationships with colleagues, the image?
And last but not least: how are the increasing change processes created?
Every change, every change of vision leads not only to a new leadership task but is also an expression of the developing personality. This sets the circle or spiral in motion again.
