The Circle of Impact model of leadership is not an alternative perspective of leadership. It is rather an advancement on what we’ve learned to practice over the course of the past three centuries.

For most of this time, leadership has been practiced as a top-down system of hierarchical authority. Senior executive leaders delegate the work that everyone within the company does. It is the model that grew out of the early industrial age.

Here in the first quarter of the 21^st century, social and economic conditions have dramatically changed, and so has how leadership functions in organizations. Leadership is becoming a more wide-spread phenomenon open to everyone within an organization.

Top-Down Leadership Belongs to The Past

One of the early critics of leadership was the late 19th-century British historian Lord Acton. He is famous for the following statement.

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

This corruption of power is representative of the fragmented nature of organizations. There is a brokenness created by the separation and isolation of the three leadership dimensions of ideas, relationships, and structure.

In particular, when an organization’s structure is missing a core ideological foundation, and consequently, people are treated as functioning parts of a mechanical structure, then the opportunity for the corruption of power expands. There is no shared accountability. It is all top-down through the company to its lowest parts.

Beginning in the middle decades of the 20^th century, leadership began to cease being synonymous with the concept of management. Experts like Peter Drucker and James Magregor Burns began to address leadership as a separate field of study.

During this time, Robert Greenleaf became one of the first writers to advance a fresh approach to leadership. He bridged the traditional structural approach to leadership with a more human-centered approach. Greenleaf’s contribution to the field of leadership is known as servant leadership.

“The servant-leader is servant first, it begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first, as opposed to, wanting power, influence, fame, or wealth.”*

Greenleaf was addressing a problem that he saw, not unlike Lord Acton, as the unconstrained ego of organizational leaders.

“Ego focuses on one’s own survival, pleasure, and enhancement to the exclusion of others; ego is selfishly ambitious. It sees relationships in terms of threat or no threat, like little children who classify all people as “nice” or “mean.”* 

I’m certain that we’ve all encountered leaders whose egotism has made work difficult. This is how leadership-starved companies happen.

Robert Greenleaf explains it this way:

“Everywhere there is much complaining about too few leaders. We have too few because most institutions are structured so that only a few—only one at the time—can emerge.”* 

I have had conversations with business owners who challenge my notion of leadership being a function of the character of an individual, rather than as a role or title in an organization. They tell me that most people are not born for leadership. They see themselves as a member of a select group of human beings, uniquely gifted for leadership.

I tell them you see leadership this way because you have created a business structure to validate that perspective.

Leadership in the 21^st Century Is Distributed

Not all business executives or owners will fall into Lord Acton’s authoritarian leadership mold. Many do because all they see is the structure, their plan, and the operations that form the activities of the business.

If I ask them, “What is the impact of your core values on your business?” Or, “What percentage of your employees’ potential is being realized each day?” Most don’t know how to answer.

They are inhibited by a perspective which is limited to their organization’s structure. They can’t see how having a dynamic understanding of purpose that binds people together as leaders of impact is relevant to the operation of their business. They are captives to the limitations of perspective.

This is the principal problem that the Circle of Impact model was designed to address. The fragmented nature of the way we think about organizations in effect takes assets off the table and puts them in the deep freeze. Yet, not being able to see the deep connection between a company’s core ideology, the relationships within its workforce and its organizational structure creates a level of competitive vulnerability which is unnecessary.

How a leader conducts herself in the context of their organization, Greenleaf’s servant leadership concept, gained wide acceptance within the leadership world.

Servant leadership is not a replacement for a hierarchical structure. It is an approach to relationships within an organization much like networks of relationships serve. I say this because some contemporary approaches to servant leadership place it in opposition to traditional structures.

A hierarchical business functions best when the structure is aligned with a strong set of core values and networks of relationships characterized by trust. To implement a servant leadership approach requires a change in self-perception by the executive team.

This change of mindset allows them to focus on elevating the whole company to become a leader-rich one. In this sense, to be a servant leader is to become a facilitator of the leadership capacity of the people who serve the company. One of Greenleaf’s more important insights provides a practical approach to this change.

Leading Within A Company of Leaders

Greenleaf’s introduced the idea of “the first among equals” structure of leadership. Often called by its Latin form, primus entre pares, a first among equals structure is based upon a shared respect between each person within a team or the organization.

A first-among-equals approach means that in the context of the work the person with the most immediate responsibility for the work leads. The others assist as servant leaders. On a team that has many different facets to it work, leadership rotates through the team to that person who also has the knowledge and expertise to facilitates the team’s work together.

This idea from Greenleaf undergirds the role of networks of relationships within an organization. A network is not precisely the same as a work team. Instead, it is a set of relationships that are engaged with one another in support, learning and the execution of projects. They typically circumvent the structural boundaries of departments and the social boundaries of organizational silos. They serve the interests of those involved to provide insight, perspective and operation support. They function as a first-among-equals network of relationships.

In a first-among-equals situation, each person comes to the group with their own set of responsibilities, their own perspective and their own commitment to the overall interests of the individuals in the group. They come to contribute. It is here in this context that the Circle of Impact leadership model finds its expression.

*Robert Greenleaf quotes from Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness.

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