Like day needs night, Romeo needs Juliet, and bacon needs eggs; so do leaders need followers. However, these great partnerships are examples of symbiosis, and followers needs leaders every bit as much as their leaders need them.
From a ‘Mom and Pop’ store to the greatest multinational corporation, there is an organizational structure which anoints its leaders. The structure provides power to those at the top by virtue of their position, and that power and position is recognized by everyone within the organization.
However, as the saying goes “With great power comes great responsibility”; and it is when that power is wielded inappropriately or abused, that it becomes a stumbling block which loses the leader the respect of their followers.
As an example, let’s say that a manager sees someone doing something that they don’t necessarily agree with. They then yell at the person in front of everyone, giving them a hard time for their mistake. The person feels humiliated, and just wants the ground to open up and swallow them, as they have no place to hide. The others there, while they are not in the spotlight, will feel uncomfortable and embarrassed on behalf of the person, and may also feel insecure. After all, if the boss does that to someone else, they might to it to them some day. This sours the atmosphere in the company, filling the air with negativity and crushing the energy.
I’m not suggesting it’s wrong to correct subordinates, simply that it’s wrong to abuse the power of a position. The employee who was publicly upbraided isn’t going to be thinking about how they can improve their behavior; they will be thinking about how they were victimized, dwelling on it and expanding it in their mind’s eye, like a growing cancer, and cancer spreads. The boss who does this loses peoples’ trust, and their own credibility. Nothing good comes from the action for anyone, it’s a lose/lose spiral.
Managers are always taught the importance of ‘leading from the front’, but I’d like to suggest an alternative strategy, which I like to call ‘leading from the middle’. It requires managers to recognize and accept their position, and the power generated by it. This is all they need to influence their team – ‘throwing their weight around’ is not required, and is the equivalent of shouting out: ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Leading from the middle is a leadership style which respects everyone and doesn’t throw positional power in anyone’s face.
Managers who lead from the middle don’t spend all day hidden away in their offices, directing their subordinates via e-mail or via team leaders. Instead, they are out and about on the ‘shop floor’, being present and participative, listening to their staffs’ ideas and demonstrating their interest. Such behavior has a positive effect on the team as a whole, increasing morale and motivation.
The boss holds the ‘power of the paycheck’ – they have the power to fire someone, and they make decisions on things like promotions and raises. For these reasons, any counsel from the boss, positive or negative, carries a great deal of weight in the mind of the employee. This is why developing staff and dealing with problems with their choices is something which must be done in private, and from a positive perspective. The boss should have enough credibility and respect not to need to publicly humiliate their staff in order to effect change. Leading from the front can be very autocratic, whereas leading from the middle is a process of working together as a team within a positive culture of continuous improvement.
Bosses who lead from the middle exude an infectious level of positivity, praising desirable actions and behaviors from others. This means they have to be there to see them, not cloistered in their office! When it comes to less than desirable behaviors from their subordinates, they coach people and lift them up to where they need to be. They talk about their team as ‘we’, not ‘you’. Teams which are led from the middle do things together with their leader, they are not ordered to do things from outside the team, and it is this unity of purpose that makes leading from the middle so effective.
