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The Nature of Leadership
Authority, influence, and standing: what the role actually consists of, and what it costs the person holding it.
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01
The Costs Nobody Describes at Promotion
Promotion is presented as accumulation. It is also a set of subtractions, and the largest of them is the loss of accurate information about yourself from two directions at once.
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02
Leading People Who Know More Than You
You cannot evaluate the work. You can evaluate the reasoning, and the difference between those two things is the whole of the skill.
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03
What Cannot Be Delegated
Importance is not the test. A thing cannot be delegated when the act of delegating it destroys the thing, and most violations are conflict avoidance in the language of empowerment.
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04
The Asymmetry of Responsibility
Authority is bounded and responsibility is not. The gap between them is permanent, and the characteristic failure of mid-level leaders is treating it as a defect to be closed.
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05
Authority, Influence, and the Difference Between Them
Position, power, influence, and standing are four separate things that arrive on different schedules. The most common error is assuming they accumulate together, and position is what hides the difference.
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06
When You Have the Position and Not the Standing
The signals are quiet and specific, and the instinctive remedy makes it worse. Standing is not affection, and a leader who campaigns for it reads as someone unsure they hold the job.