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LEADERSHIP IS A PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE, WHICH MAXIMISES THE EFFORTS OF OTHERS TOWARDS THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A SHARED GOAL.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Positive Leadership: Lessons from Harry Potter


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a wonderful film and a fitting end to the series. If you have any mental and emotional bandwidth left over as you’re watching Harry save the world, you might also put your leadership lens on for some examples of servant leadership in action.

Servant leadership is based on the principle that the leader is the servant of the people that he or she leads. Servant leaders have a desire to serve first and lead second. The concept was first articulated by an AT&T executive named Robert Greenleaf in the mid-20th century and he eventually wrote a book on the subject - Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 

The president of the Greenleaf Centre, Larry Spears, has identified ten characteristics of servant leaders. You will find that Harry Potter embodies all or most of them. Here they are:

 •Listening
 •Empathy
 •Healing
 •Awareness
 •Persuasion
 •Conceptualisation
 •Foresight
 •Stewardship
 •Commitment to people’s growth
 •Building community

As you watch Harry Potter in his last movie, look for those characteristics of a servant leader.  Perhaps those qualities are one reason the books and movies have been such a phenomenon. People want to be around and be led by people who embody those traits.   Maybe we see in Harry what we hope or would like to see in ourselves. Maybe the magic was not so much in the wand and the spells as in the way Harry led others. If that’s the case, all of us may actually have a shot at being leaders who make a difference. It just comes down to our motivation and how we act. 

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