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Leadership Theories
The leader is charged with the responsibility to see something accomplished through people. If this is really true, then it follows that the people who are being led must recognize and support the charter given to every leader. There are four accepted charters: The acceptance theory of authority means that those who are to be the led must accept the fact that the leader has been placed in charge and is being held responsible for the production of that unit. The institutional theory holds that power is bestowed by position. The leader, therefore, has authorities and responsibilities as defined by the rules - nothing more and nothing less. Those who are the led now look upon the leader as one for whom the minimally acceptable level of performance will be performed. The competence theory holds that the individual with the experience and expertise or who knows the answers must, by definition, be the leader. It assumes that people will follow. Watch any advertisement for large stock brokerage houses and their competence is heralded to the skies. The charismatic theory holds that the individual who by force of personality is placed in a leadership position will be able to provide sufficient leadership to keep the group functioning. This works well for a time, but eventually becomes a shell game. The Delegation of Responsibility It has been said that authority can be delegated but responsibility cannot. Responsibility is inherent within the individual; that responsibility must be accepted to be effective. Accountability occurs when there is leverage over the subordinate. Responsibility, then, is accountability accepted by the individual. Some years ago, faced with unreasonable performance pressures, I wrote a leadership credo in support of my people. The entire text of that credo is not relevant to our discussion here, with the exception of the following excerpts: * It is I - and not my people - who am responsible. * My people react well to praise and rail against criticism. * I am their buffer; I will define their work, seek their understanding and commitment, and measure their performance. * In the final analysis, the accomplishment of work within my unit is mine, and mine alone. * We succeed or fail as a unit. * And most of the last paragraph: "I am a person who is responsible for more work than I can physically perform myself. For that reason, I do not know, and do not wish to know, all the details of every task for which I am responsible.... Success is always the result of the product of people whose needs are met, working within the framework of a reasonable allocation of resources, progressing towards a goal worthy of accomplishment." The Vision Thing Again It is easy enough to prescribe a vision and expect people to fall into line with it. In a voluntary organization, it generally does not happen. Instead, it's useful to get those people to establish the vision you wish to pursue. What would be your vision of AVON leadership? Would it be the six-figure income of Lisa Wilber? Would it be to concentrate on the development of your spheres of influence? Would it be the opportunity to expand others' lives? Whatever your own personal motivation, it becomes extremely important to outline your leadership vision in terms that are acceptable to those being led. One way to do that would be to ask each of these people to prepare a written document to answer or respond to the following questions. Here are the questions one group was asked and the answers it was suggested that they consider committing to: 1. What is excellence in your own leadership performance and what will you to do achieve it? 2. How much time are you willing to devote every week to your recruiting efforts? Here it was suggested that five hours, distributed across the week, would be suitable. Alternatively, members were asked if they would commit part of a weekend day. 3. How many people are you willing to commit to talk with? Here members were asked about their willingness to talk to two a day, 10 per week. 4. What advertising programs are you willing to prepare, fund, or distribute as a means to attract candidates and customers? Downline were asked if they would prepare and distribute their own recruiting literature, obtain and distribute Avon's recruiting literature, or take out ads in a publication in an effort to draw people. 5. What training of your downline are you willing to mentor? Were they willing to go to their downline people's homes for a face-to-face meeting? Would they be available for initial interviews? Would they be available to do additional training in my behalf? Would they make it a point to call their downline people at least once a week to resolve any problems? Would they remind their downline people about purchase order submission, upcoming meetings, or if their orders arrived intact? 6. What meetings will you commit to attending each and every month? Would they attend sales and downline meetings? Leadership meetings for both downline and district? Work sessions for newsletter preparation? Canvassing and tailgating activities? 7. What support are you willing to offer to me in the running of the unit? Would they conduct a downline meeting? Present a training module? Take on newsletter responsibility? Develop and conduct "pocket" downline meetings in different parts of the city? Moderate an Internet discussion loop for the downline or for the District? From their answers to these questions, these folks can pretty much write a job description for their leadership activities. I continued to detail what I would like them to do at the minimum: * Get out and find some candidates. There are 800,000 people in this city. Do you really expect me to believe you can find nobody? If we must schedule some practice recruiting sessions, then we will do so. Attract them by bulletin boards, church flyers, handbills on windshields, ads in the newspaper, letters to friends and acquaintances, etc. Knock doors, address meetings, ask people on the street, stand in a parking lot - do whatever you need to do to make this work for you. * Plan on regular physical and telephone contact with all members of your downline. Plan on canvassing with them. Plan on meeting them at district and downline functions. * Plan on attending all pertinent meetings where your downline could be in attendance. Show them your support, * Plan on district and downline leadership meetings as called. My personal vision would be to be a Senior Executive Unit Leader earning a six-figure income. That may not be possible. But with a lot of experience in the development of other people's careers, that vision extends also to developing such a dream for those people whom I aspire to lead. |
