How this ‘leadership process’ can help managers earn power instead of demanding it

Kim Clark served as dean of the faculty at Harvard Business School for a decade. He also served another decade as the 15th president of Brigham Young University–Idaho and spent four years as the Commissioner of Education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Management at Brigham Young University.

Jonathan Clark is a professor of management at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he has served as department chair and associate dean.

Erin Clark is a managing director with Deloitte Consulting, Human Capital, where she works with clients to improve individual and organizational performance.

Here, the authors share five key insights from their new book, Leading Through: Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership. Listen to the audio version—read by the authors—in the Next Big Idea App.

1. The need for a shift from Power-Over to Leading Through

Mobilizing people to make things better helps people and organizations thrive. That is the great work of leadership, and it is often very frustrating. In our research, we found that this is because while executives need to do the work of leadership—the work of mobilizing and empowering—this is often not what they do. Instead, the actions they take are manifestations of a deeply embedded paradigm of power rather than leadership.

This paradigm of power confuses and conflates the exercise of power with the work of leadership. We call this dominant way of thinking the Power-Over paradigm, shorthand for power over people and the organization. It is subversive and often so deeply embedded that we don’t see it. And yet, there is a recognition that something needs to change and many organizations are trying. We can see a new paradigm emerging in these efforts. This book is our attempt to capture these emergent ideas and bring them to life in a new paradigm which we call Leading Through, meaning leading through people and through a leadership process that permeates the entire organization.

We use three metaphors that draw on our human nature to describe the Leading Through paradigm: the soul, the heart, and the mind of leadership.

2. The soul of leadership: Seeking to do good

The work of leadership is about doing good and making things better. It is moral work that requires a moral context or shared framework of values and beliefs that guide decisions and actions. The work of activating the soul of leadership includes building on universal values like kindness, honesty, and care to animate the ultimate purpose in an organization. You do this in such a way that it illuminates the boundaries within which everyone acts, from senior executives to the front line.

This makes possible one of the most powerful things that leaders do: generate light to propel the organization forward. We use the metaphor of light intentionally as a symbol for life, energy, wisdom, and understanding that defines the moral context of the organization. In contrast, actions that run counter to the moral context generate darkness which leads to inconsistent and damaging actions and decisions.

The discernment and discipline necessary to generate light and strengthen an organization’s moral context are not a destination or state of being. It is a continuous cycle wherein mistakes are made, and learning and growth become a source of strength for everyone. We call this the cycle of virtue. People who live this cycle are engaged in the work of leadership.

3. The heart of leadership: Promoting human thriving

Leaders seek to lift and strengthen people, help them grow, learn, and find meaning in their work. It is an emotional relationship defined by mutual commitments that bind people together. In Leading Through, we present a framework for the heart of leadership. In both our research and our own experience, we have seen the principles behind this framework in action. We call it LIVE, which stands for Love, Inspiration, Vitality, and Expression. LIVE provides a structure for understanding the needs and interests of people and for helping them thrive.

Love: We use the concept of love broadly but intentionally to mean human connections of understanding, appreciation, compassion, and care. The personal work of leadership is sustained by creating human connections of love. Without connection, people cannot thrive. We need each other, including at work. This requires intentional effort on the part of individuals; it requires leadership.

Inspiration: The word inspire comes from a Latin root meaning to breathe into. In common usage, “inspire” captures the sense of an influence that energizes, invigorates, and motivates. When truly inspired, you are learning, growing, and becoming more. Engaging in leadership work to mobilize and empower inspires those around you.

Vitality: We think of vitality as positive personal energy for meaningful action. This is both physical and emotional. On the physical side, it derives from the condition and care of our bodies, the extent to which our bodies function properly and are properly fueled. On the emotional side, it comes from the ability to regulate stress and anxiety, and is tightly intertwined with good mental health. Leaders create energy by focusing on vitality as an intentional outcome, nurturing personal energy that in turn energizes others.

Expression: People who thrive act on their inspiration and energy to give expression to their knowledge, wisdom, and skill. In LIVE, we focus on two forms of expression: voice and creativity. People who thrive have a voice: the opportunity to share their ideas and contribute to making meaningful decisions. People who thrive also have the chance to create and contribute to developing and producing something new, either through improvement or innovation. With voice and creativity, people experience the joy of expression and thrive by making meaningful contributions to work they value.

Alignment across the four elements of the LIVE framework has a powerful amplifying effect. We align ourselves with others and build others up, and they, in turn, do the same. There is more power in the work and we all grow and accomplish important things together.

4. The mind of leadership: Advancing action, learning, and change

The mind of leadership brings to life what we call the leadership process, the work that propels groups and organizations toward a desirable future. In using the leadership process in our work and teaching it to others, we have found it universally applicable for mobilizing and empowering people. In the leadership process, the work of leadership is done by those who lead the team as well as every member of that team.

There are three phases to the leadership process:

• Initiate. Opportunities and challenges are assessed and identified, and connections are made with key stakeholders.
• Mobilize. Teams and a network of key partners are built and established.
• Empower. The core team and network of partners are activated and engaged in the work, and their efforts are focused to propel the work forward.

The leadership process provides a framework in which the mind of leadership finds powerful application and, together with the soul and heart, drives the work of leadership.

5. The modular leadership system: Leadership that permeates

A greater degree of autonomy at work results in more energized, engaged people and more effective organizations. Further, the freedom to choose and initiate action is fundamental to creativity and innovation—but so, too, is structure. Without some structure, initiative could spiral out of control.

How can an organization have both innovation through initiative and freedom alongside unity and alignment from structure? The principle of modularity. In a modular system, the components work well as a united whole but can also be designed, developed, and improved independently.

Modularity makes freedom of action possible while ensuring a cohesive, unified whole. The benefits of modularity depend on three aspects of organization design:

• How work is organized and carried out across the organization.
• How integration aligns work across the organization.
• How power dynamics shape how power is used and expressed.

In Leading Through, we identify what needs to be true in each of the three areas to enable both freedom and unity. Namely, we need a framework focused on innovation through initiative; we need an approach to integration focused on making more information visible and accessible to more people; and we need power dynamics that activate the power within people. There is great potential in everyone, and the modular leadership system aims to liberate and enable the power of that potential wherever it can be found.

This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.