December 18, 2010
The Merits of Leading from the Middle
One of the true advantages I have seen developing within organizations, which utilize Social Media as a true enabler and game changing method of hypercommunications for their people, is the emergence of the leadership philosophy of “Leading from the Middle”.
Through all actors within and around the entity, both internal and external, working in a connected fashion, the organization and it’s leaders benefit from the eyes, ears and thoughts of all of those involved. The below video from Cisco explains the concept, ramifications and benefits of this emerging technology facilitated leadership approach.
To be clear, “Leading from the Middle” is not in any sense abdicating leadership authority or responsibility, as in any case, the final decisions and outcomes are still made by and reflect upon the leader or leadership team.
However, instead of those who choose to just lead from the front or the top in relative isolation, those who choose to lead from the middle harness the combined benefit of all organizational insights, information, knowledge and collective intelligence available to assist in making better, perhaps even the best, decisions possible.
One of the most interesting historical examples of the need and benefits of exercising a more delegated and distributed leadership style was in the case of Henry Ford.