Managing Leadership in Organisations

Leadership is no longer only an individual characteristic to be exhibited primarily by someone in a higher position; it is inherent to the organization, naturally expressed by all of its members, and managed by senior executives.

The concept of individual leadership is getting redundant because:
- It places on "leaders" untenable burdens that irresistibly lead to isolation, loss of direction – and disloyalty.
- It represents the surrender of our organizations, their owners, boards, executives and other stakeholders to the "leaders" and their "vision".

On the other hand, if managers are enabled to handle and utilise Leadership as a resource, they can effectively control organizations in all fields.

In his book Managing Leadership Jim Stroup writes, "Leadership is more efficiently managed through the kind of spontaneous and unheralded forms of leadership from deep within an organisation. Just as the advance of infantry across the battlefield depends on the prompting of a comparatively small number of individuals acting according to circumstances and their ability to seize the moment, so too do large organisations progress by the smaller stimuli provided by employees, technicians or administrators, within the organisation who are much closer to customers or to whatever constitutes the sharp-end of their business."

In managing leadership, the emphasis is on:

- Organisation's objectives: The organization defines the framework objectives systematically, so they can be fulfilled
- Indicator and objective system: The indicator and objective system structures and spreads business to all levels
- Stakeholders' needs: To know if stakeholders have received it
- External communication: To carry out all the activities so that our brand is transmitted appropriately and we receive feedback.
- Culture of excellence: To promote a culture based on achieving excellence in all fields of management and to involve people.

These dynamics would enable everyone to: -
- learn leadership skills
- apply them constantly to themselves
- take responsibility for their own actions and decisions
- partner with others as equals, rather than seniors and subordinates.

This view of leadership:
1. Unleashes the leadership from within the organization towards achieving remarkable results.
2. Frees senior managers from the pressure of doing something extraordinary and drives them to do run the organisation extraordinarily.
3. Enables them to return to their principle duty of managing the organization - including the leadership inherent to it.