Leadership that matters

I learnt...

Paradoxes of transformational leadership
Paradoxes of self-confidence
Transformational leaders have a high degree of self-confidence. It is this self-confidence that enables them to act. However, if leaders rely on their own actions alone, rather than the actions of followers, they are likely to fail as leaders.

Transformational leaders must have a high degree of self-confidence if they are to take effective leadership action. Even more important, they need such confidence to instill self-confidence in followers who carry out organizational tasks and achieve organization goals.

Paradoxes of power
Transformation leaders must have a high need of power. This is what motivates them to lead. However, this same need drives both a Gandhi and a Hitler.

Transformational leaders have a strong need for power. They want power to use it to benefit others and the organization, not just to benefit themselves. However, the most important way that leaders use power is to share it, by empowering followers and teaching them how to use power in organizationally productive ways.

Paradoxes of thought
Transformational leaders must have a high level of cognitive capability, the ability to understand complex chains of cause and effect that happen over relatively long spans of time. This is what we mean by 'vision'. However, they don't use this ability to create a vision that is a prediction of what will happen. Insteadm they use vision to decide wht actions they must take to make happen the outcomes they desire.

Transformational leaders must have a high level of cognitive capability to construct the organization's future. However, it is followers - in whom leaders help to develop increased cognitive capability - who think through, identify, and take the specific day-to-day, week-toweek-, month-to-month and even year-to-year actions that result in the desired future outcomes and results.

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Adapted from Sashkin Marshall, Leadership that matters. San Franciso, US: Breett-Koehler Publishers. 2003.