Although leadership and the exercise of power are distinguishable activities, they overlap and interweave in important ways. Consi...der a corporate chief executive officer who has the gift for inspiring and motivating people, who has vision, who lifts the spirits of employees with a resulting rise in productivity and quality of product, and a drop in turnover and absenteeism. That is leadership. But evidence emerges that the company is falling behind in the technology race. One day with the stroke of a pen the CEO increases the funds available to the research division. That is the exercise of power. The stroke of a pen could have been made by an executive with none of the qualities one associates with leadership.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The problem is simply this: no one can feel like CEO of his or her life in the presence of the people who toilet trained her and s...panked him when he was naughty. We may have become Masters of the Universe, accustomed to giving life and taking it away, casually ordering people into battle or out of their jobs . . . and yet we may still dirty our diapers at the sound of our mommy's whimper or our daddy's growl.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »