32 Leading with NLP
Authority works best where you have an accepted hierar-
chy, such as the army or the police force. Then people move
together because of the strong implicit accepted values that
everyone shares. If you are trying to lead people who do not
share similar goals and values, then authority is not enough.
A report entitled Liberating Leadershipwas published by the
Industrial Society in 1998. It was a survey of the views of
1,000 junior managers and professional staff. Of those sur-
veyed, 81 per cent admired leaders who had no formal
position of authority. They also made it clear they did not
want the old command and control managers. They wanted
managers who showed enthusiasm, supported their people
and recognized individual effort. They did not like authori-
tarian managers who inspired fear and insisted things were
done their way.
Authority alone is like pushing from behind. What auto-
matic reaction do you have when pushed from behind?
Resistance – unless you are travelling in that direction anyway
and you experience the push as helpful. When you do not
know what lies ahead and you are not sure whether you want
to move forward, resistance is completely understandable.
Imagine a group of people all working together like a
string of beads. Now imagine trying to get this loose collec-
tion of individuals to move forward together in the same
direction by pushing them from behind. Even if you push
evenly across the whole group, some may resist and the line
will break up as some move forward while others drop be-
hind. To keep the line in shape, traditional management
exerts force from the side. The more people resist authority,
the more management they need and more difficult to get
anything done.