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Superleadership Leading Others to Lead Themselves |
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by Vadim Kotelnikov & Ten3 East-West
"To be effective, a leader must successfully influence the way people influence themselves" - Charles S. Mans & Henry P. Sims, Jr.
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Why Superleadership? Super-leadership is a new form of leadership for the era of knowledge-based enterprises distinguished by flat organizational structures and employee empowerment. A super-leader is one who leads others to lead themselves through designing and implementing the system that allows and teaches employees to be self-leaders. "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers" - Ralph Nader Empowered Self-Leadership The best organizations have a theory and practice of leadership that subscribes to and promotes the concept that leadership exists at all levels within the organization. "Everyone provides leadership for those responsibilities that have been assigned to them. For the the highest performing organizations, even the lowest-ranked staff within an organization must assume leadership and attention to detail for their responsibilities in a manner similar to the most senior and powerful2". With super-leadership, followers are treated - and become - self-leaders. Case in Point: General Electric (GE) Running the mighty GE enterprise, with its twelve major businesses, Jack Welch didn't seem like a traditional manager. He seemed more like a superleader: "I have no idea how to produce a good TV program and just as little about how to build an engine...My job is chose the best people and to provide them with dollars. That's how the game is played." Jack Welch abandoned the old practice of setting goals for GE's business leaders. "Now, we don't reward them according to whether or not they reach their objectives. They're all going to get paid on their improvement, and they know that. In bureaucratic companies, they waste a lot of time on making budgets. They waste energy. The world is changing quickly. We can't afford to waste time in bureaucracy. GE is an informal company. We trust each other."4...More |
Bibliography:
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"The New SuperLeadership", Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr., 2002
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"The Basics of Leadership", Merlin Ricklefs, 2002
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"Jack Welch and the GE Way", Robert Slater, 1999
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Jack Welch quoted in Nikkei Business, February 21, 1994
