Good vs Effective Leadership

It's been a little while since I posted anything from the Lead Change Group blog on here, so I'm going to make up for that by sharing two posts today. They're both by Mike Henry, the founder of the Lead Change Group. This post is about Good vs Effective Leadership; the next will be on Sustainable vs Effective Leadership. I hope you find them useful!

Let’s agree today that good leadership is not the same as effective leadership. Let’s agree that the word good is an evaluation of the end result rather than the leader’s actions. Did it achieve good purposes? Did it create value? (By value I mean benefit in excess of cost.) Did the benefit to all parties exceed the cost to all parties? Let’s agree that good leadership is that authority or influence that creates a good outcome. If the outcome is not generally good, it would be bad leadership. Using this model, “bad” becomes a big word. Any leadership that doesn’t create positive outcomes for the contributors and stakeholders can’t be good. As Jen stated in her comments, what Hitler did can’t be good. It can however be effective.

Effective Leadership
An Effective leader is someone who manages to get people to do what they want. It could be defined as one who exerts influence to get others to achieve the leader’s objectives regardless of the quality of the outcome. It will be effective if people allow themselves to be influenced. The outcomes can be good or bad.

Just Plain Ugly
In keeping with the movie, ineffective leadership is just plain Ugly. We won’t even try to clean it up. If you have to stoop to manipulating or threatening or bullying, that’s ugly leadership.

It seems from my connecting with people all over the world through Twitter and the Lead Change Group on LinkedIn, as well as the interest that has been shown in starting local leadership groups like Authentic Leadership Cincinnati or Lead Change Tulsa, that a growing number of people agree that our world needs an infusion of good leadership: effective leadership that brings about net-positive outcomes. The only way to do that is to contribute more than you consume. Let the revolution continue in your life and sphere of influence today!