Written by: gfesadmin on October 27, 2012

In my leadership career, I have seen three new Executive Directors of Continuing Care Retirement Communities fail to win the right to lead and after six months to a year, they resigned, were terminated or decided to retired. I have seen two new Executive Directors almost lose their right to lead but they decided to change their behavior and won the right to lead from their leadership teams. Leading is a complex dance mixed with position, charisma, goals and relationship.

Jay Lorsch in his essay A contingency Theory of Leadership (Norhria and Khurana,2010) reviews the literature on contingency theory leadership and explains this complex journey the leader must take in order to influence followers to follow. Lorsch simply defines leadership as an individual who influences others to follow him or her (p,414). Lorsch then goes on to identify the variables leaders and followers work with to accomplish this agreement. The leader influences others through position, charisma, aligning values with followers, goal setting, relationship building and communication.

I have often pondered this dilemma, how does a leader influence others to follow. The first break through in my understanding was found in John Maxwell’s book Developing the Leader Within You. Maxwell explains his ladder of influence which starts from the least influential to the most: 1) position, 2) permission, 3) production, 4) people development and 5) personhood.

When I saw this ladder concept, it dawned on me that leaders had to win permission from followers to lead.

How does a leader win permission? Lorsch would say it would be through a combination of position and charisma. Charisma is a personal elusive quality of a leader that attracts followers to him or her (p.418).  Position is the power to set goals and direction, tell others what to do and fire someone if they fail to complete the goals. If used without relationship, position causes fear.

In my mind, Charisma starts with building a relationship. The leader at the beginning of starting his or her position needs to listen closely to each direct report. Listening to current goals, problems as well as personal values and goals are critical for a leader to begin to get permission to lead. Then when new goals are set by the leader, they can be communicated in such a way as to align with the personal values and goals of direct reports. Theodore Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I have become a believer that this saying is the beginning to walking up step two and gaining permission.

I then took this concept and used it in orienting new Executive Directors I hired. This is making a difference and new Executive Directors are winning the right to lead. Since I have added this training in orienting new leaders I have seen two leaders begin to lose their teams because they did not understand how to use charisma. In both cases, I used the services of a professional executive coach to work with the leader and the team to bridge the gap with success.

When you lead, how do you gain permission? How do you win the right to lead? Leadership is an honorable profession that can serve others with compassion and accomplish great goals. Without compassion and caring, leadership can be a fearful and terrible experience for many.

Nohria, Nitin and Khurana, Rakesh. Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice: An HBS Centennial Colloquium on Advancing Leadership. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2010

Maxwell, John. Developing the Leader Within You. Nashville: Nelson Thomas, 1993

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