The leadership of a business, or indeed any organisation or team, can be conducted in many ways. One of the few things I remember from A level history is the contrast between the approaches of the seventeenth century French Cardinals Richelieu and Jules Mazarin. Both were extremely powerful statesmen, but their methods were very different. As noted in a Wikepedia article on Cardinal Mazarin:
The management style of Mazarin was entirely different from that of Richelieu. The contrast was described by Cardinal Retz, the future enemy of Mazarin, in his Memoires: "One saw on the steps of the throne, where the sharp and fearsome Richelieu had thundered rather than governed the people, a leader who is gentle, benevolent, and demands nothing...He has the spirit, the insinuation, the playfulness, the manners, but also a certain laziness...."
In other words, Mazarin was more an exponent of “soft power”. This is a term which the American political scientist and Harvard Business School professor Joseph Nye explains centuries later in Soft power: the origins and political progress of a concept was coined by him in his 1990 book Bound to Lead. He describes the concept as follows:
Power is the ability to affect others to get the outcomes one prefers, and that can be accomplished by coercion, payment, or attraction and persuasion. Soft power is the ability to obtain preferred outcomes by attraction rather than coercion or payment.
As originally conceived this concept was applied in the context of nation states and political power, but soft power is equally applicable in business. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in The Benefits of Soft Power Joseph Nye also comments that:
Soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others. In the business world, smart executives know that leadership is not just a matter of issuing commands, but also involves leading by example and attracting others to do what you want. Similarly, contemporary practices of community-based policing rely on making the police sufficiently friendly and attractive that a community wants to help them achieve shared objectives.
Jim Collins in Good to Great, which chronicles what makes certain high performing companies outperform their peers, describes the nature of great leaders as follows:
“The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.”
In other words, the exercise at the very top of successful businesses of soft power. I have seen this working in professional practice and large corporations, both as a characteristic of very effective leaders who I have admired, but also as a means used by those supporting and working for leaders to influence the management and direction of the business. Indeed, professional practices with the number of leading experts in their fields working within them readily lend themselves to the exercise of the art of soft power. Management structures can be said to be flattened by the influence of subject matter experts and client rain makers. The term “herding cats” can be aptly applied to managing professional practices!
Technology developments have also enhanced the practice of exercising soft power. Returning to a quote from Joseph Nye:
“Information is power, and modern information technology is spreading information more widely than ever before in history.”
As this LSE blog How the new digital world is changing how we conceive of soft power observes:
The other major change affecting soft power definitions and policies is technological innovation. It has created new communication channels and an unprecedented level of connectivity in a multitude of ways. New media has changed the direction of soft power message dissemination from its traditional diplomatic sources to “user-generated content” outlets where ordinary citizens, not government experts, start and dictate soft power conversations.
While this article Technology and The New Digital Soft Power from the National CIO Review in America observes in the context of emerging technologies that:
This growing influence can be considered a “digital” soft power and will determine how technologies such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), facial recognition, and quantum computing will be inculcated into our lives.
I recently attended a law firm webinar on AI and ethics which illustrated the pervasive influences of these new technologies and proposed that ethical considerations would be crucial in the application of AI. See this Strathclyde Business School blog Leading Forward: Soft power and a compelling purpose by a visiting professor and non-executive director, which makes a similar point and describes soft power as “a major differentiator in sustainable successful organisations” commenting:
My definition of soft power is “a persuasive approach to employee, customer and stakeholder engagement, involving the use of values-led influence” – the power of a healthy culture that you can feel, smell, and taste.
What I mean by persuasive is inspiring people through a relentlessly high bar of standards which give people energy. My notion of great leadership is based on morality, ethical behaviours, kindness and the belief that the person at the top is there to service as well as direct.
I suggest that soft power is even more pervasive and relevant in the third decade of the twenty first century than it was in the seventeenth.
As Dwight D. Eisenhower shrewdly observed “Leadership is the art of getting people who want to do what must be done”.
The management style of Mazarin was entirely different from that of Richelieu. The contrast was described by Cardinal Retz, the future enemy of Mazarin, in his Memoires: "One saw on the steps of the throne, where the sharp and fearsome Richelieu had thundered rather than governed the people, a leader who is gentle, benevolent, and demands nothing...He has the spirit, the insinuation, the playfulness, the manners, but also a certain laziness...."
In other words, Mazarin was more an exponent of “soft power”. This is a term which the American political scientist and Harvard Business School professor Joseph Nye explains centuries later in Soft power: the origins and political progress of a concept was coined by him in his 1990 book Bound to Lead. He describes the concept as follows:
Power is the ability to affect others to get the outcomes one prefers, and that can be accomplished by coercion, payment, or attraction and persuasion. Soft power is the ability to obtain preferred outcomes by attraction rather than coercion or payment.
As originally conceived this concept was applied in the context of nation states and political power, but soft power is equally applicable in business. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in The Benefits of Soft Power Joseph Nye also comments that:
Soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others. In the business world, smart executives know that leadership is not just a matter of issuing commands, but also involves leading by example and attracting others to do what you want. Similarly, contemporary practices of community-based policing rely on making the police sufficiently friendly and attractive that a community wants to help them achieve shared objectives.
Jim Collins in Good to Great, which chronicles what makes certain high performing companies outperform their peers, describes the nature of great leaders as follows:
“The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.”
In other words, the exercise at the very top of successful businesses of soft power. I have seen this working in professional practice and large corporations, both as a characteristic of very effective leaders who I have admired, but also as a means used by those supporting and working for leaders to influence the management and direction of the business. Indeed, professional practices with the number of leading experts in their fields working within them readily lend themselves to the exercise of the art of soft power. Management structures can be said to be flattened by the influence of subject matter experts and client rain makers. The term “herding cats” can be aptly applied to managing professional practices!
Technology developments have also enhanced the practice of exercising soft power. Returning to a quote from Joseph Nye:
“Information is power, and modern information technology is spreading information more widely than ever before in history.”
As this LSE blog How the new digital world is changing how we conceive of soft power observes:
The other major change affecting soft power definitions and policies is technological innovation. It has created new communication channels and an unprecedented level of connectivity in a multitude of ways. New media has changed the direction of soft power message dissemination from its traditional diplomatic sources to “user-generated content” outlets where ordinary citizens, not government experts, start and dictate soft power conversations.
While this article Technology and The New Digital Soft Power from the National CIO Review in America observes in the context of emerging technologies that:
This growing influence can be considered a “digital” soft power and will determine how technologies such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), facial recognition, and quantum computing will be inculcated into our lives.
I recently attended a law firm webinar on AI and ethics which illustrated the pervasive influences of these new technologies and proposed that ethical considerations would be crucial in the application of AI. See this Strathclyde Business School blog Leading Forward: Soft power and a compelling purpose by a visiting professor and non-executive director, which makes a similar point and describes soft power as “a major differentiator in sustainable successful organisations” commenting:
My definition of soft power is “a persuasive approach to employee, customer and stakeholder engagement, involving the use of values-led influence” – the power of a healthy culture that you can feel, smell, and taste.
What I mean by persuasive is inspiring people through a relentlessly high bar of standards which give people energy. My notion of great leadership is based on morality, ethical behaviours, kindness and the belief that the person at the top is there to service as well as direct.
I suggest that soft power is even more pervasive and relevant in the third decade of the twenty first century than it was in the seventeenth.
As Dwight D. Eisenhower shrewdly observed “Leadership is the art of getting people who want to do what must be done”.
RSS Feed
