LEADERSHIP
Leading When You Are
Not The Boss
By George Mbithi
T
here are those conversations you
have with your friends and they
end up forming part of your “alone”
moments afterwards, making you think
about certain subjects critically. Recently,
I was chatting with a friend on the issue
of leadership. According to my friend, one
is born either a leader or a follower. There
is no way you can be a leader if you are not
born one.
He picked several examples of major
failures by known corporate leaders who
led corporations to extinction, never to be
on their feet again. He said that the world
is suffering because of forcing things down
the throats of people, including making
non-leaders lead.
This got me thinking, not in the line of
whether leaders are born or made, but in
the line of leading when you are not the
boss. Do we have situations where some
people take up leadership responsibilities
when they are not in positions of
authority? Should you be the boss as to
influence the direction a group takes?
In my research on this topic, I came
across an interesting book by Alan Sharp
et al, titled Lateral Leadership: Getting
It Done When You Are Not The Boss.
According to the authors, no one can
get everything done alone. We have to
work with others. We should not need to
negotiate with them to get them to work
with us.
Yet we cannot just tell most of them
what to do or how to do it. People have
different ideas and approaches. The
book introduced the concept of Lateral
In the past, positional power used to work rea-
sonably well, but today, every time we lean heav-
ily on the “because I said so” option, there is
always unwanted collateral damage to the rela-
tionship with your colleagues. Positional power
should be minimized and under-stated. It only
guarantees the job will get done to the absolute-
ly lowest standard.
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Leadership, which refers to a “leadership
without ‘title’ or position”. It is the natural
inclination of an individual to get things
done.
Lateral leadership has very little to do
with power. Allow me to briefly refresh
your memory on the four types of power
available in the work place.
Positional Power
Positional Power comes from your position
or title in the formal hierarchy of your
company. If you are a Managing Director,
you have more positional power than first
line supervisor and rightly so. The rewards,
authority, and prestige of positional power
are highly valued and rigorously pursued
in any office set up.
There’s good news and bad news about
positional power. The good news is that a
structure of positional power and authority
is absolutely necessary to bring order
and discipline to organizations. Often,
respect is earned where men and women
accomplish jobs of great responsibility.
The bad news is that positional power can
be easily abused. In the past, positional
power used to work reasonably well,
but today, every time we lean heavily on
the “because I said so” option, there is
always unwanted collateral damage to
the relationship with your colleagues.