Leadership as defined as Agency.

Defining Influence Skills. My objective was to make trainable definitions and activities for our personnel. our HR director has always asked me to Run Leadership training and I’ve wondered why she kept insisting I give it.

Leaderships

Agency and the Ability to emotionally overcome problems and give confidence and credibility to support others. How to give other PEOPLE agency and confidence. this is about the Willpower or Emotional Self Control of the person exerting Leadership. When everyone else gets distressed and disheartened when problems arise, a “leader” – the emotion we attach to that person – arises when we see someone who can work through those problems.

And this has very limited Applications. Its not a Convince someone type of Social Interaction. This is an interaction where the person gets along with you or works along side you. It really so much more effective when there is CONTEXT, remember most social situations are context dependent – Threats, Diplomacy, and Persuasion.

As a Direct Interaction, leadership relies on the ability to Communicate Sincerity, Authenticity, and Trust. Convening TRUST or Credibility requires a testable criteria or a formulation of Information.

There are other leadership definitions,

like Technical Leadership – which lets people overcome challenges because they are Skilled in that particular kind of problems. A skilled IT helps a regular group of employees navigate a very Technical IT related problem. His/her confidence and ability to not be phased by the problems allows them to offer up their time and resources to that IT helping them in their Technical problem.

Then there is Transformational Leadership which is leadership with all the “Motivational Rubbish” that doesn’t give you anything actionable because of the amount of Misinformation about it. I would steer clear from using Transformational Leadership because many have used it to create blind trust and hijacked its use.

The mental Muscle you want is the ability to Take a Sudden Shocking and Urgency requiring problem and process it systematically. Just because its URGENT doesn’t mean one should take short cuts – Quality at the Source/ Do it Right the First time. Take the time you need to ensure it is done right. Hone that muscle, train it so that many discrete steps blend into almost one smooth action. Don’t be scared to look like a Noob and go through the Framework and Checklist. Relish in the opportunity to Exercise that muscle over and over again.

Formulating Leadership as Agency

This was hard to think about because I needed to ask a lot of Why’s how the leadership I’ve experienced worked and failed. Why the signals worked and why do I feel this way about some people’s leadership and terribly about other peoples leadership.

Me talking about it in the Car for 4 minutes while my wife laughs at me going pedantic.

Diplomacy

Communicate and Align Goals and Objectives. Get others talking, to Listen Effectively and Actively. To have a High Comprehension of the circumstance and problem, to target the key point that needs to be influenced.

Intimidation/Threats

Ability to give out threats, punishments, disincentives, (design) deter/deterrent, prevention, as well as being consistent in its use.

Persuasion

(as opposed to Intimidation and Threats) the Ability to make economic Incentives, to design incentives, to be able to give effective reward, renumiration, pay, salary, incentive, to create the desired outcome.

Game in the Brain