“Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence, and inspiration.” – Robin S. Sharma
How do you behave under stressful situations?
Do you ask others for their opinions or do you tell everyone what to do and how you expect them to do it?
Do you lead by example or do you follow the philosophy, “Do as I say, not as I do?”
Watch my video as I share three reasons most leaders confuse force and privilege with power. Learn why transformational leadership can propel your business and have clients raving about your products and services.
What is transformational leadership?
“The first and only person I actually lead is myself!” This is the mantra of a transformational leader. These leaders understand that title and position does not give you the power to lead. Rather this leadership style is earned by how effectively they lead self and their ability to inspire others to become their best self. It is when your choices and behavior influence another person to take inspired action. Dwight D. Eisenhower said it well, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
In order to step into transformational leadership one must clearly understand the difference between force, power and privilege.
Force: Force is external and often an expression of a title, position or rank. Force is often confused with power and effective leadership. However, the ability to get people to act is often due to a perceived potential loss or reward. Force is when you use your title or position to pressure, manipulate, coerce, or remove free choice. Although positional leadership is needed and effective in some situations, when it becomes the dominant leadership style the consequences are often low moral, little innovation, and high turnover.
”There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or influence. Those who lead inspire us.” – Simon Sinek
Power: True power on the other hand is internal. Access to this power is gained through the confidence and esteem one acquires from having initiative, creating successful outcomes and overcoming challenges. It is an unshakable belief in your ability to inspire action and create results. When a leader walks with internal power, decisions are not made to coerce, seek approval or prove one’s worth. Decisions are guided by clear principles and values rather than events and emotions.
Privilege: This is a deep commitment to fair and equitable treatment for all members of an organization and society. To understand privilege is to be self-aware. It is insight about how your beliefs, biases, personal judgments and ability to stereotype can color decisions. It is to be aware of how your leadership position provides you access to resources, special treatment and advantages. To navigate privilege is to make decisions keenly aware of your ability to create access to resources or deny access and marginalize.
Transformational leadership is a leadership style in which leaders encourage, inspire and motivate individuals to grow, innovate and create change. It is a leadership style that sees the value of every member of the organization and stands for the fair and equitable treatment of all members. An organization that is grounded in transformational leadership creates loyal leaders. This is because the organizational culture encourages self-expression and uses the leaders’ ideas and innovation to shape the future success of the company. When transformational leadership is used at the executive level, the result is a strong corporate culture, a high level of trust, employee ownership and independence in the workplace.
If you truly desire to work from a place of true transformational leadership, schedule your Mindset Mastery Moment!