Category Archives: change

Top 20 leadership movies (that I’ve seen)

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I’ve been chewing on the lengthy list of leadership movies that were recommended in the comments and responses to my last blog post. As a result, I’m pulling together a series of blog posts on top leadership movies. There’s no shortage of lists, so I’m not sure mine has much to add to the noise, but it was a fun exercise.

Here are the factors I used when I ranked the following movies that I’ve seen and recommend:

  • My standard is leadership where others could have stepped up but didn’t. That’s the main factor to bump movies to the top of my list.
  • Unexpected, non-positional leadership.
  • A complex portrayal of leadership that shows it’s not as easy as it looks.
  • Resourcefulness and perseverance in the face of difficulty.
  • Portrayal of leadership at multiple levels.
  • A well-told story. I used Rotten Tomatoes ratings as my standard.

So, here they are, the top leadership movies I’ve seen:

1. Invictus – The convergence in the leadership styles, roles and methods of two leaders. The impact of that rugby team on a nation came from the collaboration between Mandela and Pienaar, the rugby captain. In addition, there are contrasts with other leaders: de Klerk, the jailers and Mandela’s security forces. Interestingly, the coaching staff don’t really feature in this sports movie. See my more complete commentary here.

2. Amazing Grace – Two leaders with very different styles, roles and methods. Everyone focuses on William Wilberforce, but after watching this one I had to pick up a biography on William Pitt. Other leadership influences show up in the abolitionists, John Newton, Wilberforce’s wife and opposition leadership.

3. Lincoln – An interesting portrayal of situational leadership as Lincoln tries to gain support for the 13th Amendment. One of the most interesting angles is the various members of congress struggling to summon courage. And a fascinating portrayal of Lincoln’s need to lead his family. Read more of my thoughts here.

4. Shawshank Redemption – While one of my favourite movies, I didn’t think of it as a leadership movie until someone made a comment on my blog post. Dufresne is an extremely unassuming man who ends up leading fellow inmates and influencing a lot of people with titles and authority.

5. Braveheart – I almost didn’t want this one to rank so highly, but it really does wrestle with leadership issues, especially between William Wallace, who practically begs others to step up and lead. There are lots of contrasting leadership styles, including the king, the king’s son, the nobles and the magistrate who tortures him.

6. Hoosiers – An unconventional leader, an impossible challenge and lots of setbacks make this a great story. In the genre of coaching—where leadership is expressed primarily through drawing out potential and influencing a team to do something it didn’t believe it could do—this movie is at the top.

7. Captain Philips – A ship captain with huge expertise in one area finds himself thrust into areas of weakness and tapping into unknown leadership ability. He goes toe-to-toe with a young, hungry, adaptive Somali leader who makes the most of limited resources and takes on a Goliath.

8. The Queen – A more recent retelling of the Madness of King George, this movie details a prime minister who must guide the monarch through a major crisis. Unlike the other movie, this story portrays leadership by the monarch and the PM and her next-in-line. She listens to advice and manages to avert disaster with decisive leadership.

9. Apollo 13 – Leadership is demonstrated at multiple levels in this story, from the flight commander to the grounded astronaut in the simulator who swallows his disappointment. But it’s the flight director who keeps everyone inspired, on mission and committed to not giving up. He adjusts his leadership style to meet the crisis.

10. The Hunger Games – I’m thinking of the body of work: the three books and the two movies released so far. A young lady who is simply struggling to survive finds herself with a boatload of followers and has to learn how to lead a movement she never asked to lead.

11. The Madness of King George – What happens when a positional leader is sidelined while a potential usurper waits in the shadows? That’s the challenge of prime minister William Pitt, who has to find a way to manage the crisis, hold off the coups and lead upward.

12. Courage Under Fire – One moment of courageous leadership by an unlikely leader is blurred by others who try to twist it for their own purposes or even bury it. The way the story is told is innovative, though it all boils down to one moment of leadership when I wish we’d been able to get more of a glimpse of what Meg Ryan’s character was thinking and feeling.

13. To Kill a Mockingbird – A lawyer takes a stand to fight for his convictions and a minority, despite huge obstacles and cultural pressure. He manages to lead those he advocates for and he models new behaviour to a mob of whites, but his greatest leadership is to his family.

14. Moneyball – A new leader, facing an impossible challenge, finds a trick to even the playing field and in doing so, reinvents the entire game. He has to persevere through enormous pressure from the system. One of his most courageous decisions was to show loyalty rather than take the high-paying, high-power role offered him at the end.

15. Erin Brockovich – A “nobody” with courage, perseverance and principles puts in the hard work, taking on a Goliath and winning. No doubt she’s a hero, but leadership is influencing others. Perhaps her greatest feat in leadership is leading upward. While her boss has the title, she sets the direction for the law firm.

16. Amistad – There’s huge potential for leadership lessons in an opportunistic slave who starts a revolt and then has to learn how to overcome huge obstacles to get his followers back to Africa. Unfortunately, the story is ultimately told about a lawyer and a former president who have to figure out how to communicate with and for them. So I found the leadership lessons diffused.

17. Elizabeth: Golden Age – This was a story of one of history’s most powerful women facing incredibly-difficult challenges. I could have moved it higher, but I temper this one with the fact I haven’t seen the first movie with Cate Blanchett, and I hear it’s better.

18. Thirteen Days – The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis is an excellent portrayal of the complexities of leadership when everything is on the line. From fiery generals used to getting their own way to cabinet secretaries who have to carry the leader’s vision to a president who needs to know which voices to listen to, this movie drops you into the agony of decision-making when there is no good decision.

19. The Iron Lady – An interesting delivery of the story of a woman who stepped up to give leadership when no one in her male-dominated world was willing to. She courageously made and stuck with decisions, knowing full well the consequences and lack of support she’d get. It’s a bittersweet movie because it shows the insignificant retirement of an enormously successful public servant.

20. Remember the Titans – Another great coaching movie, with lots of overtones and cultural ramifications. It shows how great leadership and sports success can bring people together like nothing else. Continue reading →

Pastoring through change

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[re-posted from the Wycliffe Canada President’s Blog]

We all know everyone responds differently to change. Some embrace it. Some lead it. Some react negatively at first but eventually come around. And some will never go along with it. Many have written on these various responses, and I have little to add.

The question I want to unpack is how we as leaders and colleagues respond to those responses. In other words, do we recognize accurately where our brothers and sisters are in their journey through a major change so that we have a tailored response rather than a one-size-fits-all approach? That’s not natural for managers to do, and it takes a lot of work, but it’s absolutely critical to the success of a change initiative.

Tuesday in our Leadership Team meeting, we took a look at Paul’s closing words in 1 Thessalonians. Among them was one verse my pastor in Orlando used often for training community group leaders:

And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle [or unruly], encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. (1 Thess 5:14 ESV)

I want to apply his words today to the context of change.

What happens when you misdiagnose someone’s condition and apply the wrong medicine? For instance, what happens if you encourage or help the unruly and disruptive? Or you admonish the fainthearted or weak? Obviously, the results of both could be disastrous. In the one case, you’d be enabling. In the other, you could crush their spirits. Like Jesus, we need to be leaders of whom it could be said,

a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. (Isaiah 42:3 ESV)

But the distinctions between the needs of the weak and the fainthearted are slightly less obvious. To encourage the weak is like telling the cold and hungry, “be warmed, be fed,” and then walking away (James 2:16). To help the fainthearted is like my ham-handed attempts to solve my wife’s problems when she simply wants a listening ear. How often do we jump to the wrong medicine, based on a cursory diagnosis on our brother’s or sister’s condition?

In contrast, what incredible good can result when a manager knows where each of his staff members is on their journey through change and responds with just the right touch! Those who threaten to disrupt or sabotage the process are rebuked. Those practicing passive-aggressive resistance are admonished. Those who are weary of change are encouraged and motivated. Those who have lost their vision are re-inspired. And those who need strength — who don’t know what to do — get the help they need.

That’s the result we want, but I hope you can appreciate how difficult it is for managers to assess their staff members well. So let’s not put this solely on the managers. How can we do this for each other as well? If you’re together with someone else at the same spot in the journey, don’t let your conversations turn into gripe sessions. Encourage, admonish and help each other. If you’re ahead in the journey, find ways to use your own journey to bring your brothers and sisters along.

We’re not going to get it right every time. That’s why Paul’s last thought is so important: “be patient with them all.”

As Wycliffe Canada embarks on a change process and a restructure, we can’t face the future in isolation. We need each other. I believe God has placed the people around us who have just what we need to get through the changes ahead. That’s what community is all about.

Mark of a movement

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Let’s continue mining the leadership development principles found in Acts 6. When the apostles made the decision to remove their fingers from day-to-day program management, who did they turn to? First, they opened the problem to “all the believers,” inviting their input. Second, they went local. The problem was a Greek-speaking versus Hebrew-speaking issue. The apostles were Hebrew-speaking, and when accused of some latent racism, they selected Greek believers to address the problem. They found a local solution. Third, they turned to the next generation. There’s no indication of age, so I don’t want to imply that they handed over responsibility to young leaders, but they clearly handed responsibility to the recipients of the gospel message.

That’s the mark of a movement: those who bring a new idea or message and hand it off to the recipients of that message to take it where they didn’t imagine it could go. We’re experiencing that within Wycliffe. There’s a movement exploding in many parts of the world, carrying forth Bible translation in ways and to places our founders never dreamed of. For instance, I just spent a few days with leaders of 25 non-Wycliffe organizations birthed in Central and South America who are just as passionate about advancing Bible translation in their countries and from their areas of the world as we are. We’re joining together in an alliance to figure this new world out together. It’s a world where language groups are setting up their own Facebook pages, beginning work before we ever get there and becoming evangelists to neighbouring people groups.

Here’s the ugly side, though: the one who can most easily suppress a movement is the original messenger. We westerners do this all the time. To give us the benefit of the doubt, most oppression by a majority is unintentional. We simply don’t realize where we shut down innovation, fail to hand over ownership or fail to see potential. A friend of mine calls it “institutional racism.” In older organizations, it can be a historical colonial viewpoint that has long been eradicated in the obvious places but has become institutionalized in policies, procedures and practices that have never been challenged. It’s time for some audits of the deep, dark corners of the organization.

Since this blog is about leaders, let’s not let ourselves off the hook. Let’s make it personal. Have you audited the deep, dark corners of your own core beliefs for inconsistencies in what you say and practice in terms of holding onto authority or ownership? I remember reading a passage in Sherwood Lingenfelter’s Cross Cultural Leadership about a missionary who had to return to the United States. He successfully found and prepared a national worker to assume responsibilities for preaching in the local church while he was gone. By the time he returned, this local pastor was thriving in his role over a growing church. What a tremendous success! That’s our dream, right? Imagine what happened next. This missionary thanked his brother and took over preaching responsibilities again. I wanted to throw the book down! I wanted to throw some stones!

Until I realized I probably do the same thing all the time. I take back a role I empowered my kids to do, because it’s part of my identity. I delegate an assignment to a subordinate and begin meddling again without thinking. How often have I done that? I couldn’t tell you, but I’ll bet my subordinates and the minorities who have worked with me could tell me… if I created a setting where they could speak openly. I won’t be throwing any stones.

In response, here’s a better way: Let’s lay hands on “the next generation, pray for them and posture ourselves behind them. Let’s lay aside our feeble visions for the capacity of the next generation and allow God’s vision for them to prevail. He may well have a movement in mind.

Resetting Missions – Fifty years behind

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As I mentioned before, I recently attended the RESET conference in Arizona. My expectations were probably set too high, as the lead-up was fantastic.

  • Regional dialogs unearthed some really radical ideas, such as a proposal that mission agencies drop their own HR departments in favor of a single non-profit that provides those services. It was clear to all of us that there’s just too much redundancy.
  • The case statement drew from Ramo’s book, Age of the Unthinkable. I’ve blogged enough on that book that the author is still showing up in my tag cloud in the right column of this blog.
  • We knew going in that the two host organizations, The Mission Exchange (formerly EFMA) and Cross Global Link (formerly IFMA) were very likely going to end 50 years of talk and finally merge into one organization representing missions in North America. What a great model for the rest of us!

So those lofty expectations doomed me. I found the sessions somewhat flat in comparison. One tweet resonated with a number of us after a speaker proposed a list of changes for world missions: “This would have been great if we were talking about it 50 years ago.”

Then this week I discovered the speaker who should have been there. To their credit, the organization that introduced futurist Dr. Jay Gary to me was The Mission Exchange, the same organization that introduced me to Ramo and hosted the RESET Conference. Unfortunately, their webinar yesterday didn’t get the platform the conference would have given him. Dr. Gary is a professor with Regent University’s Masters of Strategic Foresight program. Just the name of that degree makes me salivate…

I’m only just beginning to unpack what Dr. Jay Gary recommends for the mission world in his article, “Toward the Great Work.” Here’s an example:

Protestant World Missions practitioners are fifty years behind awakening to this Great Work, and will likely have little leverage in leading our world to safety, contrary to the Wisdom of Jesus. This is a sober fact that evangelism has become reductionist, and merely focused on the after-life, not this life, contrary to what Jesus did for his generation. We must listen to the late missiologist David Bosch and learn how to transform mission.

For those of you who attended RESET, imagine a speaker lineup of Cobie Langerak, Tim Breene and Jay Gary. For those gifted with Futurist strengths, you’ll love the following collection of articles:

Strategic Foresight: Looking to the future to plan today

The future of Business as Mission 

15 Provocations from the future 

Trends and Technology Timeline 2010+ (the London Underground-inspired map above)
I need to go read some more. I just had to get this posted so you could join me.

Drinking the Kool-aid

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I’ve described this overlap period with the current president as the best of both worlds: I can think strategically without having to worry about any of the day-to-day management of Wycliffe. However, if I try to strategize without first internalizing the corporate culture, I’ll fall prey to Drucker’s axiom:

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

So how do I steep myself in Wycliffe’s corporate culture so that I can maximize my time on strategery? Like many offices, Wycliffe in Calgary is difficult to define as a block. It has many subcultures. So, whether it’s a new organization, a new country or a new department, here are some practical ideas to absorb the essence of organizational culture.

1. Experiential learning. I’m on a quest to jump in and identify with as many subcultures as I can. Two clear ones are cycling to work and joining the WTHL, the Wycliffe Table Hockey League. I have now biked to the office four times, the first of which came in 36 degree temperatures. That’s soft core. Cycling to work in the snow earns you more points.

I also watched by first table hockey game. I wish I’d had a camera to capture how serious they take this sport. I’ll post a photo next time I have an opportunity, but let me give you a taste. They have hockey cards for each team and a commemorative program that tracks every kind of statistics. At this point, I’m choosing to remain an observer rather than fall prey to their slap shots and wise cracks.

To take in the culture, don’t hold back. Experience the way your new colleagues celebrate. Spend time with them away from the office. Of course, there’s no replacement for the depth forged from experiencing a crisis together, but there are a lot of things you can do to seek breadth in the interim.

2. Read the same books. When I was in Orlando, a new leader on the recruitment team asked me what books the leadership team were reading. He wanted to know the way they think and take on the vocabulary. “Easy, I said. Read Jim Collins and Patrick Lencioni.” In Calgary, the Board and Leadership Team are now reading When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. Recent reads have been Leading Cross-Culturally, by Sherwood Lingenfelter and Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, by Ruth Haley Barton. These books shape the way leaders think, talk and lead.

3. Ask questions. Speaking of Lencioni, his recommendation in Getting Naked is to ask lots of questions without regard to how they come across. The reason adults are slower to learn is their concern about appearing naive or dumb. I’m hoping most of my dumb questions will come before I take office. But I’m also hoping I won’t care more about my pride after I take office than about understanding my context.

4. Find out what influences them. If you want to join conversations at breaks, you have to know the terminology and people who influence them. For instance, media. In previous jobs, I’ve absorbed Survivor, American Idol, and Napoleon Dynamite. At church in Florida, if you weren’t playing Fantasy Football, you could find yourself cut off from fellowship with other men every Fall. When I retired from playing in 2007 (after winning my league twice in a row), I had to at least keep up on a few stats so that I could join the conversations. In Calgary, it’s the same way with hockey. Key influences include Hockey Night in Canada, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Corner Gas.

What have you done to immerse yourself in organizational culture? Lend me your ideas. I’ll probably put them to good use.

A fresh set of eyes

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Anytime you get a new person in your organization, you have an opportunity. Anytime a fresh set of eyes looks at the rut you live in, they’re going to see things that never occur to you. The key is to give that person permission to point out things that don’t make sense. Let them question everything. Your goal as an organization is to maximize that key window of opportunity.

I’ll never forget a testimonial I heard in Junior High about a chain-smoking biker who visited church for the first time. While I don’t remember the entire talk, one line lodged in my mind: At the door, a waiter handed him a menu and then walked him to his seat. Growing up in the church, it never occurred to me how absurd some of our common practices must be to those we desperately want to step in our doors. Why do we do them? Probably because no one ever asked why.

I’m trying to take advantage of my transition time with Wycliffe Canada, especially the months where I don’t have the title yet. I’m asking lots of questions, and I’m okay with the appearance of naivete. I’m fully aware that if I try to act like I know the answer, I’ll cheat Wycliffe Canada out of the foundational questions I should be asking. That’s the approach Patrick Lencioni endorses in his leadership book, Getting Naked.

So a fresh set of eyes is critical to challenge our practices and point out the obvious that is no longer apparent to the insiders.

That said, I think the emperor knew he had no clothes. Deep down, we know we’re maintaining absurdity. We know that we need to make a change; we just don’t want to do it. At the Catalyst conference a few years ago, Andy Stanley shared a quote that didn’t originate from him but stuck with him. Likewise, it stuck with me. It’s a pair of questions to ask your team, to help them move toward action and courage:

If our Board were to fire all of us today and bring in a new team, what changes would that new group of leaders make? What’s to stop us from stepping out of the room, walking back in and doing the same things?

That quote led me to my conviction for any job:

If I know what I need to do but don’t have the energy to do it, it’s time to step aside.

Reframing the generational gap

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Sometimes reframing the question simply means choosing to look at a problem as an optimist rather than a pessimist. Let me give an example from Wycliffe — an organization that’s 65 years old in the U.S. and 50 years old in Canada. As a result, both have an increasingly aging population and a large number close to retirement age. You could see that as a negative, since we’re going to need to replace a lot of workers, outpacing the retirements with recruiting if we want to grow. If we face that situation in a scarcity mode, the tendency is to either get depressed or try too hard to swing for the fences with one big solution rather than keep doing the things that have worked for a long time.

Let’s reframe the question. Wycliffe has four generations working side by side. What an opportunity for mentoring! How do we get those who’ve served 40 years in Wycliffe to pass on some of the corporate mythology to the younger generations? How do we get the young generations to help the older generations understand the times and that the values can remain constant in spite of “crazy” new methodology?

Here’s another thought: what if the decrease isn’t a problem? In other words, what if God is doing something new? At the same time as North America is becoming a tougher market to recruit in, there’s explosive growth in the Church in South America, and it has a missionary vision. What if we were to conclude that some of the dollars spent here would get a better return in Brazil or Bolivia? In addition, what if our burned-out recruiters, who have tried so hard for so long, some with very little fruit, could do a staff swap with someone in Bolivia, getting their vision refreshed and helping Bolivian Bible translation mobilizers figure out how to direct some of that missionary impulse toward the Bible translation movement?

Or what if we concluded we have to work in new ways and in new roles? Perhaps God is moving us toward more of an equipping and empowering role within the global Bible translation movement.

My point is that, if we look at the question from any of these perspectives, we come to different conclusions than if we assume the trend is problematic. Perhaps you’ve got another perspective or your own case study. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Reframe the question

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How many times have you been forced into a situation where you have to replace the status quo, but no alternative seems an improvement? You’re not going to get your followers to move from “here” if they don’t see the potential for “there.” My suggestion is to reframe the question and come up with a different solution entirely.

I learned this trick as a graphic designer, and I think it applies just as well to leadership. Turn the question around and ask it in a different way. Reframing the question means asking whether your problem could become an opportunity if you looked at it a different way. Let me give you two examples.

I think Apple reframed the issue of smart phones. My previous cell phone was too big. I wanted something smaller, and I tried a number of brands, seeking the smallest phone with the largest screen. Then I got an iPhone, which is the biggest cell phone I’ve ever carried. My biggest complaint? It’s too small. I wish it was just a touch bigger. So what happened? The iPhone reframed the discussion of what a smart phone could be and do. The iPad is Apple’s solution, and I admit I have iPad envy.

My second example comes from my house, where we spent the long weekend adding to our stack of boxes ready for our move to Calgary. Our biggest challenge was convincing our kids to part with some of their toys, even for a few months. We tried “spinning it” as an opportunity to send a gift to themselves in Canada, labeling the box to themselves to open and get fresh toys to play with. Didn’t work. Meanwhile, their play room has been getting smaller and smaller as boxes line the walls. What did we do? We reframed the question. Yesterday, the solution presented itself: build a fort/maze with boxes. All of a sudden, the whines have turned into persistent cries to pack more boxes so we can add more walls to the maze.

So, whatever issue you’re facing right now, is there a way you could present it in a different light, set it in a new context or turn it around so the negatives become positives? Perhaps it will require a bit of creativity, but the solution is likely lurking around the edges.

First, break the rules

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I hear Marcus Buckingham has a book with a name like that. I haven’t read it (yet), but it is on my list. The title came to mind as I was reading Deep Change, by Robert E. Quinn. Let me give some quick context and then give you a point from the book.

One thread for 2011 that I’m really going to enjoy following is the idea of RESET. The Mission Exchange is hosting a conference in Scottsdale at the end of September by that name, and I participated in a pre-conference RESET Dialogue session last Friday. Steve Moore’s goal is not to pull off a conference as much as facilitate a dialogue on the subject of Mission in the Context of Deep Change. An extremely relevant topic. Moore’s thoughts have been heavily influenced by Quinn’s book, along with Ramo’s Age of the Unthinkable, which I’ve blogged on in the past. With that context, here we go.

A group of executives in a large state government wanted to create a leadership development program built around the idea of transformational leadership. How could they develop public administrators who would take initiative as change agents in their organizations? They decided the best route was to look for what the Heath brothers would call “bright spots” and highlight these success stories in a series of videos. Their research began to unearth a number of individuals who led dramatic transformation within their organizations: a hospital with horrid conditions for patients, an office known for long lines and bad customer service, things like that.

Teams were sent to interview these leaders. Then the project came to an abrupt end. No videos could be made. Why? Because in each case, it appeared that in order to transform an ineffective organization into an effective one, laws needed to be broken. And how can a state teach its managers to break its own laws?

To be fair to Quinn, he’s not advocating breaking the law. His point is that leaders must take significant risks to challenge the rules, policies and procedures that become law within an organization. “To organize is to systematize, to make behavior predictable,” therefore organizations are built around systems. When an organization is growing, systems provide the stability for growth. When an organization stops growing, systems atrophy into rigid boxes.

Excellence, however, never lies within the boxes drawn in the past. To be excellent, the leaders have to step outside the safety net of the company’s regulations.

Deep change therefore brings to a head the conflict between management and leadership. If management is about making processes more efficient and standardized, and leadership in a context of change is about breaking rules, then there’s going to be a collision.

Leadership development gets awkward, then. How can an organization teach its managers to break its own laws?

Leadership requires followership

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In October 2009, my shortest blog post (appropriately) asked how I could have 23 devoted Twitter followers if I’d never tweeted. The point being that you can’t follow a stationary object. Just for the record, I’ve decided to start tweeting, but I’m still working out my strategy. I don’t want to be a random tweeter. But that’s not the point I want to make here.

Over the last two years, I’ve tried to come up with working definitions of leadership and management. I’ve struggled with understanding where the murky swampland between the two firms up on either bank. And I’ve rejected numerous definitions as being too simplistic. Or too biased.

It hit me that the main requirement for leadership is that you have followers. That suggests two parts to a working definition:

  • First, it’s not about position, but about influence. Position or no position, whether you feel like a leader or not, it’s clear: if you have followers, you’re a leader. The opposite implication is just as true.
  • Second, you can’t have followers if you’re not moving. Therefore, leadership implies change.

Therefore, let me give the definitions a stab. Feel free to add your thoughts.

Leadership: the stewardship of one’s personal authority over others to set their pace and direction.

Management: the stewardship of one’s positional authority to maximize the use of resources toward the previously-set pace and direction.

A few clarifications. I don’t think it’s fair to say, as some do, that managers protect the status quo. Managers encourage movement toward the ends, but they don’t try to change the pace or define the direction as much as rearticulate the vision.

I also think it’s worth defining what I mean by personal authority and positional authority. These terms are attempts to specify the source of a leader’s influence, borrowed from Dr. Paul Hersey. Positional authority or power is the capacity to influence others by one’s dominant organizational position. In contrast, personal power is the capacity to influence others by one’s own being.

So, there you are. Give me your reaction to these definitions. With your help, maybe we can craft something worthwhile.