January 8, 2026

The Cart Before the Horse: How We Confuse Power with Leadership

Posted by Jacqueline M Gargiulo under People, leadership, Organization Development, power | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Coming out of WWII, organizations leveraged the military’s use of power hierarchy to structure themselves. It was familiar and aligned with theories of management at the time (think Taylor, Weber). In this military model, position carries authority over others. To move “up the ladder,” one must be promoted by power into power; invited into supervisory, management, director, and executive positions at power’s discretion.

Leadership, on the other hand, is granted by followers. Followers decide the leaders they follow. This begs the question: why has organizational hierarchal power been granted the nomenclature of “leadership?” True, there are those who build leadership capacity and bring it to the power they are granted, and there are even organizations that develop the leadership skills of chosen performers. Yet, this still feels like a “cart before the horse” approach: star performers promoted into power by power with little regard for whether the resulting followers consider them leaders.

We would do better to treat power as a component of leadership rather than leadership itself. Power alone can be daunting and bring about unwelcome characteristics, precisely because leadership development is lacking in advance of a promotion to power. And here’s the thing: leadership essentials are also essential to healthy followership. So why not provide development of the essentials – self and other awareness, accountability, integrity, presence, effective communication, including listening and feedback – to leaders and followers alike?

By offering everyone the opportunity to develop essential skills, an organization may reap the benefits of healthy leadership and followership. After all, depending on each situation and its human dynamics, each of us encounters reasons to lead and follow, be it in work or life, each and every day.

When power in and of itself can be addictive and difficult to relinquish, what better way to potentially allay such addiction than to develop essential skills in everyone from the very start?

 

January 19, 2010

The Millennial Indicator

Posted by Jacqueline M Gargiulo under Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Do you feel it?  Do you sense it?  Do you see it?  There is a paradigm shift of great proportion occurring in our society, the world.  Sound research over the years has led us to better information about parenting, propelling us – finally – out of the “behaviorist era”.  We are discovering that behaviorism is unsuitable, in and of itself, to bestowing on our children the hopes and dreams we have always wished for them – self-worth and self-esteem, an innate sense of direction, loving values.

So, the dawn of the “Millennials” feels disturbing.  It is my observation that “Millennials” represent the extreme pendulum swing encountered in rebellion of out dated tradition and action, though this is the beginning.  As these “Millennials” enter our workforce, they do not respond to the behaviorist ideals of management traditionally effective with a population raised in this way.  We are left feeling uneasy, disturbed, fearful even.  Add to the “Millennials” the general “enlightenment” of the older workforce.  We no longer want our buttons pushed.  We want something to believe in.  Many of those values we held dear as children – because we never lose our life’s essence so evident in childhood – of fairness, of individuality, of self-directed fulfillment, of choice – play out throughout our years, no matter how hard we try to continue “parenting them out”.

“Be efficient with things; be effective with people.”  Popular quote, bound to become even more so, as it reveals everything about this paradigm shift we are experiencing.  To be the most effective in a global economy, we need to take the time and effort necessary to create the awareness and relationship skills required to support successful individuals to be successful teams to be successful organizations, to be a successful market… to be a successful society.   There is something to everything.  There is value to everything under the sun and moon, though no one thing has the market cornered.  Funny though, how it seems to be our human nature to constantly seek that “one thing”.  Ok, so there is “one thing”, but it is not at the level we wish to find it.  It is a global thing, not a detail.

There is enough awareness that the fulcrum is tipping away from the effectiveness of fear mongering, a fundamental aspect of the “behaviorist era”.  Trust, work/life integration, nurturing of our strengths, synergistic teams are future themes of the human asset equation.  They will prove most effective, and they will mean us taking the time.  Truly, if we have efficient process and system tools in place, the time is there.  We just need to consciously make the distinction to focus on educating and elevating the human spirit, and success will come, in more forms than currency.

Give someone a hug, it is so much more than a handshake…

~ Jacqueline