Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Leadership Effectiveness and Enabling Others to Act

Kouzes and Posner (1997) suggest a strong relationship between the effectiveness of leadership and the process of enabling of others to act. Indeed, leaders create a climate of collaboration that enables others to act.

By fostering collaboration and building spirited teams, they actively involve others under their supervision and outside their responsibility. Leaders help create an atmosphere of trust and human dignity – those who would lead must demonstrate that they understand that encouraging mutual respect sustains extraordinary efforts. Leaders strengthen others through providing followers a choice and sharing information about the tasks being pursued. Each follower feels powerful and capable through leadership responsibility that is shared throughout the organization.

Organizations that foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust can reach the goal by consuming fewer resources. Organizations with leaders who share power and information, provide options, help develop core competencies, use people to get important things done and support their efforts strengthen employees in unique and powerful ways toward self-leadership.

In sum, leadership that grows a collaborative environment and self-leadership initiative on the part of employees improves organizational performance.

Reference

Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1997). The leadership challenge (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.