Leadership Vs. Artificial leadership

Most of the readers of my posts are leaders, so I challenge you to ask yourself a question. Have you tested your leadership in an environment without titles, without status, with nothing that you collected in all the companies you worked for or created?

We all know the most common answer, and I’m willing to bet that most of you would feel this question is stupid or non-relevant. But it’s not!

Leadership and order are a need for any group of people that need to operate together against the surrounding chaos. In my discussion with people, I learned that people believe that no hierarchical structure means no leadership and no order, but that is not the case. Any group of people you put in place and give them a purpose (from surviving to sort one million apples) will start with chaos, but over time order and leadership will emerge. In most cases, the emergent of order and leadership will end up with a rejection of individuals that oppose the order. If you’ll group people that didn’t even know one another and you won’t interfere; natural and healthy order and leadership will emerge.

In our world order exists side by side with chaos, you can’t separate those two. Natural ordered group acceptance chaos as part of their reality and the need to find the balance between order and chaos. This understanding enables groups that grew naturally to be more creative, open and responsive to the new chaos that they will need to deal with.

When you observe or join any group in the working environment, the dynamic is entirely different. First and foremost leadership is not naturally emerged, leadership is nominated and assigned by another leader (usually of a bigger group of people). To make it even more complex and toxic (in most cases) a natural leader (which is not the assigned leader) exists. We all know the outcomes of such tensions.

On top of this artificial leadership, there is also an artificial order. The Nominated leader has his concept of how teams and people need to work together to achieve goals, so he is enforcing an artificial order that will support his operation model (usually supported by the order imposed in more prominent groups). There is one advantage for this approach; it feels like leadership and order are much faster in place.

Natural order and leadership are taking much more time to emerge, but they will stay for a longer time. As we all know there isn’t one solution that fits all problems, there isn’t also any order and leadership that meet all teams or group’s needs. Enforcing one order and leadership creates more damage than benefits to the overall organization.

Last but not least, artificial organizations see chaos as an enemy that they need to defeat instead of basic natural phenomena that they can leverage. To win chaos and impose order organizations have dedicated groups and processes that everyone needs to follow.

Usually, the chaos blocking groups will create processes and impose them to push chaos away and keep order. The problem with this approach is fundamental and inevitable, chaos exists and there is nothing you can do to stop or minimize it! If you are taking this approach, you find yourself surprised all the time without the ability to understand why.

So, now back to my question. Are you a natural leader? Check it outside of the cooperate environment. If you are, most cases that you can become a leader thanks to your abilities and because you nominated. This is the leadership everyone should seek.