Leadership: Influence Versus Demand

I continue my short reflections on leadership by thinking about leadership involving influence versus demand. 

I continue my short reflections on leadership by thinking about leadership involving influence versus demand. 

Leadership can exericise its power by insisting on compliance. However, genuine influence means that it draws others into the right response versus forcing it. If one truly leads and is guding others then the response one engenders draws out an intrinsic response versus one that is coerced. I do not mean to say by making this observation that compliance should never be required. However it notes that a way to examine if leadership is being truly, deeply effecitve is when the response comes without such force.

I think here of the contrast between law, which demands compliance, and grace, which engenders it out of gratitude.  Another example is how, even though one is accountable to God for how one responds to the gospel, the call when it is given is to implore people to embrace the gospel (2 Cor 5:20).

So leadership that produces genuine growth will transmit its infleunce in ways that others act responsively without the need to be coerced to act. This is a way to measure quantifiably when true leadership is present.