Have you ever had impossibly high expectations influence your performance at work? Have you been motivated by techniques such as discipline, punishments, or fear and threats? Or perhaps worst of all, have you ever been micromanaged?

These are the tactics of a traditional leadership style. Alternatively known as directive or command-and-control leadership which has roots in the industrial revolution. As author and organizational development expert Peter Block writes in his bestselling classic Stewardship, this dated model enabled businesses to “hire, train, monitor, corral expertise, and deploy people best when [organizations had] a pool of homogenous resources to draw from.”

In these systems, Block says, consistency and control were achieved through coercion and dominance. Organizations were set up as pyramids in which power was distributed linearly from a small, select number of people at the top who controlled the majority of people positioned at the bottom. This top-down style of leadership was inherently hierarchical. Each leader was vested power and authority over those below them. These leaders often ruled with compulsion, force, control, secrecy – and when necessary, with physical, psychological, and/or economic violence. Thus, the tenets of traditional leadership as we know it were established.

Suffice it to say that times have changed. Technology has evolved beyond the industrial era, and with it, our ideas about leadership, progress, and productivity. Unfortunately, much of the business world is still stuck in the past. Decades ago, management expert Peter Drucker showed us why organizations need to manage knowledge workers differently. But many of today’s leaders still rely on the same outdated techniques from the industrial revolution!

The good news? There’s a better way to lead, even if it has been slow to catch on. Here at Berrett Koehler, we call it the new paradigm of leadership – a theme that has been core our mission since our founding in 1992.

Alternatives to Traditional Leadership: the New Leadership Paradigm

So what exactly is the  alternative to traditional command-and-control style leadership? In essence, it is a leadership style that values sharing, collaboration, service over the old values of exclusion, control, and self-interest. For example, stewardship, defined below, is a progressive leadership style that fits into the new paradigm:

Stewardship: Peter Block defines the concept of “stewardship” as “the choice to preside over the orderly distribution of power.” In this context, it means giving people at the bottom of an organization the choice over how to serve a customer, a citizen, and a community.

Below, we expand on several key differences between the traditional and progressive model of leadership, relying greatly on Peter Block’s vision of Stewardship.

Class Systems vs. Egalitarian Structures

Progressive leadership models often seek to abolish class systems common to traditional leadership models. This means that everyone, regardless of rank or position, is subject to the same rules of behavior, processes for getting things done, and reward systems. Contrast that to a traditional model based on a class system: groups at the top are generally given vast advantages over other groups, with executives rewarded as much as possible and everyone else rewarded as little as possible.

An egalitarian structure opens the door to creating non-hierarchical organizations, in which leadership is dispersed among all staff, not concentrated in a small number of people at the top.

Information Restricted vs. Information Shared

In the old models of leadership, information is restricted and passed down to those who “need to know.” Admittedly, maintaining progressive models of leadership can be difficult in sticky situations, even in organizations with progressive leadership. Leaders may hesitate to share sensitive information with all staff members. For example, Peter Block references the difficulty of openly discussing the reorganization or termination of a project or the reduction of staff. “These sorts of actions destabilize our lives and create unanswerable anxiety,” he writes. But stewardship means telling employees about cutbacks, reorganizations, and the details of projects as soon as possible so they can make informed decisions about their life. “People who are owners and responsible for the unit need to be part of these tough dialogues and learn to live with the anxiety that goes with them,” says Block.

Employees are often left in the dark about how their company is doing. To create a progressive culture that’s marked by transparency, Block suggests promoting business literacy – that is, understanding the essential indicators of how a business is doing.

The point: hoarding essential information is a layer of protection for leadership from the proverbial lower level of the traditional pyramid – but it’s an unnecessary protection. “Customer, financial, and work-process responsibility is essential to everybody’s job,” writes Block. “Anyone who does not want to learn these things cares little for the well-being of the larger organization.” By sharing information with employees, progressive leaders empower them and increase collaboration.

Open information also ensures that ideas flow more freely across all levels of an organization – great ideas that may have gotten stuck at the bottom are now more likely to flourish in the open.

Profit and Self-Interest vs. Purpose and Service

In traditional models, leaders are driven by self interest: maximizing their own power, making money, generating profit, and achieving a prominent status. And as Block argues, many organizations’ current attitudes toward money are “healthy remnants” of direct command-and-control systems.

In the new leadership paradigm, leaders are motivated by improving the well-being of people and communities in ways that have lasting intrinsic value. In short, they put service to the organization or community ahead of self-interest. This means that profit becomes a secondary motivation to meaning or purpose – and, as studies show, this attitude is not just reflected in the new generations of millennial workers. Boomers and Gen X-ers are not exempt from being purpose-driven; the drive for purpose increases as we age and gain more experience.

Ultimately, the new leadership paradigm is driven by concepts such as service, kindness, and transparency. While these concepts may be deemed as “soft approaches,” there is evidence that the progressive leadership philosophies drive results. In fact, recent data showed that management transparency is a top factor when determining employee happiness. In that same survey, team play and collaboration – concepts that are rooted in purpose-driven leadership – rank as the top traits that employees love about their peers. Another survey found that people believe a high level of trust in their company would have a major impact on them being happier at work, doing higher-quality work, being more engaged, and staying at a company.

“Stewardship’s interest in the public common good urges us to question the taken-for-granted beliefs about what an institution exists for,” writes Block. He admits that the issue is too complex to list a series of action steps: “What is needed is a new narrative. A conversation about the world we want to create together.”

Progressive leadership starts this conversation. And it offers a clear alternative to traditional, command-and-control models that dominated the conversation for so long.

About the author

Maren Fox is a Digital Marketing Specialist for Berrett-Koehler, an independent publisher with the mission of connecting people and ideas to create a world that works for all.

To learn more about Berrett-Koehler Publishers, visit www.bkconnection.com.

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