Leadership, Power and Politics

Today, the view of people being the most important component of organisations, reigns supreme. Successful management of this critical organisational resource requires strong leadership, a skill sometimes viewed as the mystical “it” that a person radiates to rally support for a cause, motivate others and change the very face of organisational life day to day. In a word, leadership is about influence.

In this ebook, the aim is to remove the mystic veil from leadership, the processes that make leadership work (power, empowerment and politics) and the critical role that leadership plays in organisational life all around us. The vast literature available on the subject of leadership, power and politics underpins the importance that the organisational society places on these concepts.

A commentary on management vs leadership will be followed by a discussion of power. This provides a neat platform to introduce the concept of empowerment and the various leadership models and perspectives. This is followed by a brief expansion of organisational politics, especially in the technical environment.

Finally, the knowledge and intuition thus gained will be used to model the interdependability of leadership, power, empowerment and politics to illustrate the critical role that leadership has to play in the broader organisational context, such as motivation, organisational culture, management of change and strategy, etc.