www.connectitnews.com has been posting a series of my articles on their site. Recently they ran this one:

Many Managers Disempower Themselves
Many managers unwittingly believe that leadership only comes down from the top. They give away their power by believing that they don’t have any. Read the whole article here.

After reading this article, Herb Knudsen shared his insights with me:

“I totally agree with your premise about managers disempowering themselves.

I served in a high power/low authority position at Standard Oil of Ohio in the early 1980’s. I never demanded. I developed eminently reasonable proposals, circulated them to the as many people as possible who had an interest and an opinion that would be important to the manager with authority.

I always asked each person or group for comments, changes and improvements to the proposal. After the proposal had the support of everyone, I took it to the manager with authority and asked for his comments, changes, improvements and approval. My success rate was very high. Networking rather than demands could be a superior recommendation.”

Best regards,
Herb

Herbert D. Knudsen, President
Ogallala Comfort Company
www.ogallalacomfortcompany.com
www.ogallalaescapes.com

Herb’s examples illustrate that leadership is an action, not a position. He also provides a good example of the type of upward leadership we see with highly effective people – regardless of their role or position. You can find more articles on Serving, Influencing, and Leading Upward at https://crm.hr.com//en?i=1116423256281&s=&t=/Default/openExternalURL&url=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5qaW1jbGVtbWVyLmNvbS9zZXJ2aW5nX2luZmx1ZW5jaW5nX2FuZF9sZWFkaW5nX3Vwd2FyZF90aXRsZS9zZXJ2aW5nX2luZmx1ZW5jaW5nX2FuZF9sZWFkaW5nX3Vwd2FyZC5waHA%3D". One of the articles in this section (“Assessing Our Ability to Influence Others”) features our Influence Index assessment. You can read about it in this article and complete the assessment at
http://www.jimclemmer.com/quizzes/the_influence_index_14.php.