The Process of Leadership / Followership Alignment

The Process of Leadership / Followership Alignment
Jaap de Jonge, Editor, Netherlands
Hi Bill, your ideas sound quite interesting... Could you please elaborate a bit further and perhaps give a practical example? Thanks.

Transformational Leadership
Bill Boynton, Teacher, United States
For many years I have been doing research on the two very different disciplines of Management & Leadership.
Through my career I have experienced both disciplines, and came to realize that there is a difference between them. However we do need them both, so we need to find a way of aligning them together so we can help managers lead, and leaders acquire some abilities with management issues.
Management has always been about the hard numbers, the processes of planning, organizing, acquiring resources etc etc.
Leadership “is now” more relative with the soft side of management, the vision, direction, people/people/ people, creating commitment, inspiring, and providing the examples (Mentoring) of organizational integrity and trust.
With all my research I have come to the conclusion that the bottom line for both these disciplines to work effectively together, as well as with their peers and subordinates is through the ability to establish their influence.
Influence then becomes the key for making things happen, for addressing change and making positive continuous progress.
Now when we do all of this properly, we can go right to our core resource base of “Followership,” and begin to find ways to cultivate this resource.
In my research I found the following passage (clause) that I thought summed up very well what we can call “Transformational Leadership” because that would be exactly what we should be doing.
Leaders follow and follower’s lead, relative to their ability to “Influence,” there’s that word again. So here is the article, I think it came from “Wikipedia” and seems to fit what I strongly believe in.
“Transformational leadership is defined as a leadership approach that causes change in individuals and social systems. In its ideal form, it creates valuable and positive change in the followers with the end goal of developing followers into leaders. Enacted in its authentic form, transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the follower's sense of identity and self to the mission and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that optimize their performance.”
This is where leaders accept the influence from followers, and followers begin to achieve more self-awareness and personal confidence and take on more responsibilities.

Transformational Leadership
Stephen O. Asaju, Student (University), Nigeria
I have personally seen transformational leadership worked perfectly in my organization with desirable results in organizational development, managerial effectiveness and efficiency as well as financial leverage. It is worthy of adoption in challenging administrative environments.

Transformational Leadership
Ann Snider, Management Consultant, United States
I think there are some poignant lessons from Sesame Street that are called 'cooperation'.
Its fundamental not to separate people from the organization because without the people, what exactly do you have?
If the people in the organization don't work together to make it succeed, then again, the same question.
Morale and performance are enhanced by the idea that people are succeeding at their jobs, in their organization and in their lives.
So, if from the bottom up and the top down, individuals are not recognized for their contribution, then what should you expect? Happy productive people who can't wait to support a new initiative?
Elmo clearly understands this. And the lessons are so simple we can teach them to preschool children. And the children understand it pretty well.
It doesn't take 14 paragraphs of multisyllable, over used words to communicate this. Or to build a culture of integrity.
It takes an understanding of what cooperation, communication, meaningful rewards and real relationships.

'influence', Short or Long Term?
claudio pizzi, Business Consultant, Argentina
Great reviews!
We know the negotiation rules, and eventually we use it to negotiate with employees, but, can we say that we are negotiators? In the same way, we know the techniques to handle people. Does that make us leaders?
I research that leaders can learn techniques to manage companies and managers can learn techniques to manage people but, a manager could become a leader if he accepts the principles and values that govern the leadership. The influence process only can be sustained if the leader respects and acts in accordance with this scale. The charisma is important in order to get influence in a short term.
Christ had to die on the cross for his followers to continue worshiping for centuries. An organizational leader must be "credible" to achieve sustained influence. Leaders represent people, managers represent a company. The leader can only represent both, when there is a unique vision. When the scale of values ​​of the people is equal to the scale of values ​​of the company.

Transformational Leadership
Hamza Abada, Business Consultant, Qatar
I would like to start with giving you my own simplified definition of management and leadership as follows:
Management is the set of technical skills required for governance, while leadership is the set of behavioral skills required for governance.
Next, I define transformational leadership as the progression to the attainment of the leadership and managerial skills required for governance.

The Transformation of Governance
Tom Wilson, HR Consultant, United States
@Hamza Abada: Transformational leadership, as I understand it is an executive as opposed to an acquisitive process. The object of transformational leadership, as an element of command, is to reconfigure governance, to act upon it.
The acquisition of those leadership and management skills are a requisite to the task and are acquired to some degree before the transformation process and as a result of the transformation process during it and in response to it. Governance is the sacred cow that must be reconfigured. Yet all elements of the system will reflect this transformation as necessity requires.