May 1, 2009

THE LEADERSHIP TOP 10

When Levinson Institute clients and seminar participants discover these “Top 10” leadership principles, they find themselves moving forward to more productive ways of doing business.  Remember that leadership is about creating something greater than the leader can do alone or that a loose confederation of people can do separately.

1. Accountability without authority yields fantasy and stress; it requires responsibility to fill the void.

2. Leading is all about setting direction and leveraging the full potential of those who work for you to achieve that direction.

3. A leader leverages potential by engaging commitment, aligning judgment, and developing capabilities.

4. The psychological contract affirms that your people will commit to your success when you commit to their success.

5. Setting context is the key to alignment and to getting people to think and act together.

6. Effectiveness in any role requires the potential to handle the role’s complexities, skilled knowledge for its types of work, strong valuing of its nature of work, and mature behavior.

7. Negotiating for important mutual outcomes together with strong trusting relationships requires collaboration—not competition, compromise, or concession.

8. All change represents both loss and new demands.  Effective leaders help their people to mourn the losses and experiment with new ways of working.

9. Managerial hierarchies require that many people work together on processes in common.  Strive for clarity about who is accountable for what in relation to whom.   

10. Managers must “earn” personal authority by adding unique value (in the form of insights, knowledge, coaching, etc), by establishing a common vision and mutually agreed-upon goals, and by creating mature and reciprocal psychological contracts.

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