Leadership

Being aware of your power and how power alters your own and others' reactions helps to handle power well. This is important for everyone that wants to develop a positive culture at work. If you want to look at your personal power: check my first post about power.

In this post (based on my experiences in a workshop by Julie Diamond), we look at power in organizations.

What's keeping you from developing positive (self-)leadership? The list of advantages is compelling. Positive leaders are authentic, open, transparent, trustworthy. They coach and support self and others, they see what is working well and try to amplify that. They give people feedback to keep going and to improve. They're not on people's back when the goal is clear. They value intuition as well as the ratio. They can accept criticism. They guard their boundaries and take action.

Do you manage energy? Most of us don't, at least not consciously. Leaders tend to manage information and influence within their network. Traditionally, leadership is associated with influencing people to do things. However, energy is a crucial resource within organizations. The fascinating thing with energy is that when you spend energy on relationships it increases. Energy is the source of action, and organizational performance!

All organizations exist to prevent deviance. Organizations aim for stability and end up in the middle. Not bad, but neither extraordinary. The natural focus is on what's wrong and to fix that. Think of the medical perspective, legal, and business.

But in the middle is not where the magic happens... The big dollar question is: How do you get organizations in a state of flow? How do we benefit from the best of the human condition? How do you create "positive deviance", or in other words, high performance?