Read my two previous posts to catch up.

The HBR article stated that leaders who use relational power as their main leadership approach gain the respect of their followers, but don’t achieve the true power positions. Those who are hard managers do achieve those positions. Pick your poison.

I believe it’s more about doing what’s best for the other person, the group, the division, or the company. We need to use both formal and informal power to accomplish that. It’s not about what your personal goals are, it’s about what’s best for everyone else besides you. The success will come as a result of good leadership. Your success is not the goal of leadership.

So – sometimes leaders need to be relational, sometimes they need to be hard           . Uh hem.

Yes, I am telling you to forget about the research in this particular HBR article. Who cares? How do you think non-thinking leaders will respond to such research? They will either tell themselves they want to be respected more than achieve status. Or they’ll become harder to work for because research shows those people make it to the highest positions.

Even though one approach is still more noble than the other, the focus is all wrong: my success. I’ll copy and paste the above paragraph.

I believe it’s more about doing what’s best for the other person, the group, the division, or the company. We need to use both formal and informal power to accomplish that. It’s not about what your personal goals are, it’s about what’s best for everyone else besides you. The success will come as a result of good leadership. Your success is not the goal of leadership.

Get a clue leaders.

If you didn’t read yesterday’s blog. Read it first (below).

Situational leadership. Powerful concept – so many applications and nuances.

Let me give you the principle of what I am talking about: It’s the James 1:27 principle: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Look at every job in the world and every technological advancement. What is the overall purpose? To make life better for everyone. We Christians would say the purpose is to defeat the effects of the curse we brought upon ourselves. Golden.

We are all in the business of improving life. Our top priority is to help improve the lives of the TRULY helpless in this world (not entitlement junkies). Secondly, while we improve the lives of the underprivileged, we also want to improve our lives. However, we need to keep ourselves from being polluted in the process (Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc.).

Now let me bring it to the meeting your going to have today.

When you problem-solve with your team, you will have an opinion about what the team should do. Have you ever been in a meeting where it was obvious people were pushing their idea out of some personal agenda and not from what was best for the team? Bingo.

The overall goal of the company is to make money, helping other people and ourselves. Each company needs to be involved in some facet of Social Responsibility (James 1:27).

To keep yourself unpolluted, be teachable. What’s best for the team??

Both formal and informal leadership gets abused when you are out for you, not the team.

I’ll tie it all together tomorrow.

HBR July/August 2011 “Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind”

I love HBR. I’ll read an article and it will spur a blog post.

In previous blogs, I talk about the difference between formal and informal leadership. That’s basically where they head, but with research.

“The most effective leaders are generally those who give employees a voice, treat them with dignity and consistency, and base decisions on accurate and complete information.

But there’s a hidden cost to this behavior. We’ve found that although fair managers earn respect, they’re seen as less powerful than other managers–less in control of resources, less able to reward and punish–and that may hurt their odds of attaining certain key, contentious leadership roles.”

You’re poisonous as a leader, pick your poison.

You are either poisonous to other people, or poisonous to yourself. Isn’t that what you read???

Young aspiring managers reading this have a dilemma. If they use relational influence too much, they may not impress those above them. If they use formal power, they annoy everyone around them. Hmmm, what to do, what to do.

You’ve got to know when to fold ‘em, know when to hold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. Ahh, good ‘ole wisdom from Kenny Rodgers. Who???? Forget it.

I am a huge promoter of this principle: There are always multiple goals. Combine them all and there’s the answer. The key is to know which goal to emphasize in any given scenario. Enter emotional intelligence.

Sometimes you have to be poisonous to your chances of rising the infamous corporate ladder by “taking one in the chin” for a peer or direct report. Be relational, promote others before yourself.

At other times, you need to stand your ground and frankly tick those exact same people off.

How do you know when????

Read my blog tomorrow.

I just read a short article in June’s edition of Harvard Business Review. I also am going through the History Channel series “America: The Story of Us”.

We are underestimating China’s growth and power. “China’s cities are growing so quickly that the country now has more urban centers than most Western nations do. For instance, China has about 90 cities with a middle-class population of 250,000 or more; the U.S. and Canada together have fewer than 70.” The data is one thing, the interpretation of the data is another. This data is the RESULT of something, not the cause of it.

America: The Story of Us. One central theme: our stinking tenacity. Sometimes our tenacity hurt people; very, very badly. If we could put the overall effects of our tenacity on a scale, would the good outweigh the bad? I hope so (and think so).

People weathered horrible conditions to survive. Our tenacity created innovation and production. I still see that tenacity in the core of who we are; no question. Proof? Imagine if our government actually tried to make us socialistic. It makes me laugh at what we would do in response. We’re cool, it won’t happen.

Tenacity: stubbornness and persistence. The ability to overcome obstacles.

It’s not that tenacity isn’t at our core, it’s that we have a bunch of people who are receiving the benefits of our tenacity without lifting a finger.

Do we REALLY have that many people who need THAT MUCH assistance? Really!?!

I have proof that I am consumed with James 1:27, i.e. to help those who are in distress. No one can rationally accuse me otherwise. So I believe that gives me permission to criticize our government and many in our country. It’s not that we have lost tenacity, it’s that the percentage of lazy, undisciplined, emotionally un-intelligent people in our country is rising faster than our tenacity can answer for it. Our American ancestors made it or died. It’s that simple. No one bitched that the government wasn’t helping them (sorry for the expletive).

So what do we do as a country? I have no idea. Quit spending? Decrease the entitlements to put pressure on people to either become tenacious enough to overcome their circumstances or become homeless? Sounds like the right tension.

For you and me? Become addicted to James 1:27 and tenacity. If all 300 million of us Americans were instantly translated back to the first 150 years of America’s formation, how many of us would survive?

Things that make you go “Hmmmm”.

Think about the most important things you can do this week to make yourself successful.

Now look at your calendar – are those Wildly Important Goals (WIG’s) in there? Probably a mix right? There are things in your schedule that are extremely important. But you don’t need to PLAN anything with them, you simply need to do them and experience them because they will HAPPEN to you. That’s your whirlwind. It’s like Calgon, it will take you away. Sometimes that is good, sometimes that is bad.

Now think of the things you know you would love to do and really want to do that are not in your schedule. Those are your true WIG’s. If something is already a part of your whirlwind, don’t worry about it. It will happen no matter what. List the things that you need to plan, organize, or set goals to. If you don’t they won’t happen. But as you sit back, you really believe that they are WIG’s. If these things don’t happen, nothing else matters. They could be business or personal, it doesn’t matter. There are elements in both areas that fall into the WIG category. Why? Because we are people and we have work lives and personal lives.

It’s obviously easy for work to be the majority of your whirlwind because of the severity of the consequences if you ignored that whirlwind (like losing your job). Family and relationships are harder because it’s not measurable. It’s relationship. How do you measure that? I won’t get into it, but on a side note, I can help you, call me.

Simple process. Make a list of WIG’s that aren’t in your calendar. Block out times for each of the WIG’s.

No time? B-O-L-O-G-N-A. Now look at your schedule and see all of the stuff that is good, but doesn’t fall into the WIG category. You know what to do right now.

Everyone becomes what they want to (the whirlwind truly defines us), but some people think about it and take action.