Previously I talked about three leadership style (present, legend, fictional) where people become a follower of a person (real: alive, real(ish): dead, made-up) due to what they represent. This representation creates a force between the individual and the leader (that the leader may not be aware of) which is leadership – that person is my leader as I am influenced by what they do from doing a silly dance, wearing certain clothes, or dark stuff including hurting themselves and others.

This all sounds reasonable – people follow people who do stuff that make them feel good. And this is where leadership gets tricky as we bring in new titles: managers, rulers, authorities, and along with them stuff like social norms, freedom, compliance, coercion. In order to understand the nuances of leadership we need build on how people form into groups as this will explain all the different types of leadership you will come across when reading the latest article or book on how to be a great leader in 24 hours or how empathy is killing your leadership gains. First things first – why do we create leaders in the first place?

Does your world have leaders?

Imagine a world where you can do anything. Anything you like with whom ever you like, for as long as you like with no cost or consequence. You are in chargeSounds kinda cool – total control, total autonomy, total freedom. Now, in this world are there any leaders? Why would there be? The chances are in this world if there is a leader it is you and you are the leader so you have control of what you do – you are King – but you are only king to protect yourself from being told what to do. You may not care that the people in this world follow you even like you as you are solely responsible for you and maybe some made up people in your world. So, are you a leader?

Next imaginary world. After a rather unfortunate travelling event you find yourself on a desert island. On this desert island there is everything that you need survive with two exceptions: 1) there is no company – no people, no pet like animals, and no fancy robots to keep you company, 2) there is sophisticated machines to keep you healthy – all your medical treatments from cuts and bruises to surgery are available. Think of this world like Tom Hanks Castaway but you have are perfectly comfortable and healthy but no companionship. In this world is there a leader?

In both these worlds the idea of leadership is highly unlikely. In world one you either create a leader to which you are a follower or everyone followers you through you wish which is not a leader (I will cover the difference between different types of group ‘leader’ later in this piece). In the second world there is no leader as there are no followers. You could have created a fictional leader for you to follow like a god but as that entity is a figment of your imagination it’s you following you which doesn’t count.

In the first world you were likely to be comfortable. This comfort came first from the idea of control through safety (no one was going to kill you) and second control through autonomy or freedom where you could do what you liked with only your moral compass to guide you. The second world will not have been as comfortable as although it was like the first it lacked a key want from most humans – company. Control and company are fundamental elements of group formation and once you have a group you natural have leaders (plural). The type of leader influence on the follower determines the type of leadership.

Two Dimensions of Leadership Influence

With the idea that we need control and company in our lives to be happy we next need to understand how we get that. There are two main types of influence that affect us:

1. Emotional influence
2. Positional influence

Emotional influence

Emotional Influence (EI) is where you hear about a fellow human being and you connect to what they say. Their view of the world agrees with yours and even extends it further. Let’s call this person Ami. Ami talks about issues you care about. Ami does things that you wish you could do. Ami has a view on life that you wish to also have. You want to be friends with Ami and for Ami to be friends with you. You will tell people about Ami both as a person and what Ami does. If Ami does something you disagree with you will be dissappointed with Ami. You will give Ami things when Ami asks for them be that time, your thoughts or even material things.

As you can imagine personal influence is very powerful. It will differ with different demographics but on the whole these people are role models that people aspire to. Their influence is conducive to your happiness and conductive in their behaviour. These people will not set out to be influences as they are natural in their being which is an attractive quality – people can fall in love with these types of people.

There is another, different darker, element that personal leaders can have – they can instill fear in an individual. Just as someone can have an affinity to someone because they create strong positive emotional state they can also do the opposite. At first glance this makes no sense – why would anyone follow someone that scares them? Safety. Huh? When you look at individual and group motivations we have to look at the context in which an individual is and could be in. Imagine you are in a dangerous state and there is one person let’s call them Ebi and Ebi is big and strong but also short tempered and can be violent to others. If things are plentiful and safe then the likes of Ebi are unlikely to have followers as Ebi’s skills and behaviours are not only not helpful they may be destructive (Ebi isn’t great at taking instruction or being a full team member). However when things are not so great having someone with a set of natural skills that will protect you and/or your family could be a good thing. If someone is willing to fight not you but others as you follow that person then this is a handy thing to have. As a follower you will endorse the individuals behaviour and force others to either also follow or potential be threatened e.g. “Ebi you’re great, hey everybody I think Ebi is great. Don’t you agree” Those will either have to comply, back someone else, or stand against Ebi. As the natural position is to avoid conflict many take the simple solution and back the most physically powerful person.

The physical influence of an Ebi is not as common as modern societies have complex systems to decide who the leader is. However at the micro level physical threat is a powerful reason to follow someone. This is not be confused with coercion where people do something due to a threat. That’s not leadership as you are not a follower.

Positional influence

Positional Influence (PI) is not about the person but about the position of the person in the group. This requires a group to have an agreed structure where there is an accepted position for a leader who has a magical power – authority. Authority is where a group of people decided that one person can control one or many people based on their position: somebody in a position can tell people can tell people what to do and those people will happily comply – they are influenced based on the position of the person.

Two Places

These two influences create four styles of leader:

1. Personal (personal) – influenced emotionally by an individual
2. Process (personal/process) – influenced by an individuals skills
3. Position (position) – influenced by the position or status of an individual
4. Place (position/personal) – influenced by an individuals position in a certain place/context

(In the Very Short Introduction to Leadership by Grint he describes personal, process, position, and result)

I’ve explained the personal and position so let me explain how the other two as they are a combination of personal and position.

Process influence is a where an individual has a specific skill that someone is interested in and will follow e.g. painting, puzzle solving, sport. Due to the visibility of the skill that person will have normally reached a position within the skill to be recognised. A good example of this is the strategy board game Chess.

By its design Chess can be mastered as their is a finite combination of moves – there is no random factor to the game; no dice or cards. Therefore when it comes to winning knowing the combination and the probability is crucial as players can manipulate each others position depending on multiple strategies. Having this knowledge makes you a great player as anyone who has played a decent player knows that ‘to-oh!’ when you realise your stuck and will lose.

Due to the nature of the game you can be very good at a young age. Abhimanyu Mishra became the world’s youngest chess grandmaster at the 12 years, 4 months, and 25 days. For Abhimanyu to become a grand master he had to a defined performance rating there is a scoring system that tracks the players performance through official chess tournaments. Once you reach Grandmaster you get to keep the title unless you’re found to be cheating. Abhimanyu is recognised as a leader in chess and will have followers due to his active ability in chess (if he stops playing chess he will lose his followers).

Another process leader can be in activities that are not official recognised by an institution like the world chess organization FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs). Creative arts are one that springs to mind however an activity that is easy to show individual and unique excellence is mountain climbing.

Alex Honnold is one such person to show excellence in climbing when he successfully climbed the cliff face of El Capitan in 2007) with no ropes so called ‘free climbing’. To give you an idea of this achievement El Capitan is part of the Yosemite National Park in California. Honnold wasn’t the first to climb El Capitan. This was completed by a team lead by Warren Harding in 1958 who used ropes and camps to climb the face over several months by going up down creating camps further up on each climb until they reached the time. Many would go on to use a variety of methods to get to the top but Honnold would be the first to free solo climb (no ropes, no company) pushing the boundaries of not just mountain climbing but also of mankind’s nature of conquer what looks to most to be impossible. Harding and his team took 47 days over 16months. Honnold took 3 hours and 56minutes to ascend the Freerider route which is 3200 feet or 975 metres – that’s an incredible 4m/minute of 7cm /second vertical for nearly 4 hours.

To climb any mountain free solo is bonkers to climb El Capitan is super bonkers and as such created many followers for Honnold as people wanted to know how he did it (having watched the story of the climb through the film ‘Free Solo’ I found watching to walk to the base of tiring enough).

One of the interesting things about process leaders isn’t just the skill they have but also the effort and sacrifice needed to get that skill. To get that skill the individual will have to sacrifice now just time but relationships especially when are adults. This combination of personal choice means that process leaders will a have combination of position (skill) and personal (emotion) influence that people are drawn to.

An essential part of being a process leader (followers and influenced through activities of a defined process or unique challenge) is the ability to differenitate the skill of the process. This can be an official position like a chess grandmaster or it can a community ‘badge’ like the first to climb a mountain or ridge. Either way there is a limited number of experts. Followers will recognise the hiearchy and the best will be the leaders as they influence the group more than any.

Place leaders

Place Leaders are transitory leaders who take the lead in a sitation with a group of people. Think of a situation where you have been is a situation with a group of strangers where collectively you need to solve a problem. In situations like this one person will take the lead through two different ways: 1) they will positively take the lead “let’s go this way” and others with no other option will follow (induced followers) and, 2) they will be told they are the leader “what should we do?”. In both of these situations the leader will be identified but only for the time and place of the situation; once the situation is over (the challenge is won or lost) that leader’s position disappears.

Place leaders are more common than you think but possibly not in the places common to you. Place, situational or reluctant leaders are common in stories – books, films, songs. Anyone who has seen the Die Hard film series John McClain, our hero, finds himself as the man who’s trying to his family, himself and Christmas. He becomes the leader of group of people that fight of the robbers but he takes on the role reluctantly and only until the robbers have been thwarted.

McClain and other anti-heroes (those that don’t want to be leaders but find themselves in that position who also don’t have great personal characteristics) are fictional but there are people in real life.