Effective Leadership:

Employee Empowerment

Superleadership

Leading Others to Lead Themselves

What is SuperLeadership?

Superleadership is leadership that inspires organizational success by showing followers how to lead themselves.

9 Signs of a Losing Organization

SuperLeadership is a new form of leadership for the era of knowledge-based enterprises distinguished by flat organizational structures and employee empowerment A super-leader is one who leads others to lead themselves through designing and implementing the system that allows and teaches employees to be self-leaders.

Super-leaders help each of their followers to develop into an effective self-leader by providing them with the behavioral and cognitive skills necessary to exercise self-leadership. "Super-leaders establish values, model, encourage, reward, and in many other ways foster self-leadership in individuals, teams, and wider organizational cultures."¹

12 Major Causes of Failure in Leadership

The Leader Is Best, When...

By: Lao Tzu

The leader is best,...

When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,

The people say, 'We did it ourselves.'... More

Why SuperLeadership?

"The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." – Ralph Nader

Employee self-leadership is the key to success in the new economy. With super-leadership, followers are treated – and become – self-leaders.

If superleaders are successful in providing strategic alignment and coaching people, they develop followers who are productive, work independently, and need only minimal attention from the superleader.

Leadership vs. Management

Inspiring Culture

 Case in Point  General Electric (GE)

Running the mighty GE enterprise, with its twelve major businesses, Jack Welch didn't seem like a traditional manager. He seemed more like a superleader: "I have no idea how to produce a good TV program and just as little about how to build an engine...My job is chose the best people and to provide them with dollars. That's how the game is played." Jack Welch abandoned the old practice of setting goals for GE's business leaders. "Now, we don't reward them according to whether or not they reach their objectives. They're all going to get paid on their improvement, and they know that. In bureaucratic companies, they waste a lot of time on making budgets. They waste energy. The world is changing quickly. We can't afford to waste time in bureaucracy. GE is an informal company. We trust each other."⁴

Empowered Self-Leadership

The best organizations have a theory and practice of leadership that subscribes to and promotes the concept that leadership exists at all levels within the organization. "Everyone provides leadership for those responsibilities that have been assigned to them. For the the highest performing organizations, even the lowest-ranked staff within an organization must assume leadership and attention to detail for their responsibilities in a manner similar to the most senior and powerful."²

With super-leadership, followers are treated – and become – self-leaders.

Develop a Clear Vision

The one quality that all leaders have in common is that they have a clear and exciting vision for the future. This is something that only the leader can do. Only the leader can think about the future and plan for the future each day... More

References:

1. The New Superleadership, Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr.

2. "The Basics of Leadership", Merlin Ricklefs

3. "Jack Welch and the GE Way", Robert Slater

4. Jack Welch quoted in Nikkei Business, February 21

5. "Modern Management", Ninth Edition, Sameul C. Certo