Globalization, the information revolution and democratization are long term trends that are changing the macro context of political and organizational leadership. Management researchers have detected a change in effective leadership styles over the past two decades. Successful leaders are using a more integrative and participatory style that places greater emphasis on the soft power of attraction rather than the hard power of command.

Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” in the late 1980s. It is now used frequently—and often incorrectly—by political leaders, editorial writers, and academics around the world.  So what is soft power? It is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. Almost every leader needs a certain degree of soft power.

Think of the impact of Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms in Europe at the end of World War II; of young people behind the Iron Curtain listening to American music and news on Radio Free Europe; of Chinese students symbolizing their protests in Tiananmen Square by creating a replica of the Statue of Liberty; of newly liberated Afghans in 2001 asking for a copy of the Bill of Rights; of young Iranians today surreptitiously watching banned American videos and satellite television broadcasts in the privacy of their homes.

When you can get others to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive.

However, hard and soft power are related because they are both aspects of the ability to achieve one’s purpose by affecting the behavior of others. They sometimes reinforce and sometimes interfere with each other. Soft power is not good per se, and it is not always better than hard power.

Furthermore, leadership theorists in the 1970s and 1980s incorporated soft power into a broader concept of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders induce followers to transcend their self interest for the sake of the higher purposes of the organization that provides the context of the relationship. Followers are thus inspired to undertake adaptive work and do more than they originally expected based on self interest alone.

Thus, what are the inspirational soft power skills and transactional hard power skills that leaders need to combine? Three skills are particularly important for the soft power part of the equation:

• Vision
• Emotional intelligence
• Communication

Two other skills are more closely related to transactional style and hard power.

• Organizational capacity
• Political skill

The moral of the story, of course, is not that hard or soft power is better, or that an inspirational or a transactional style is the answer, but that it is important to understand how to combine these power resources and leadership styles in different contexts. This gives rise to a sixth critical skill, which is the ability to understand the context so that hard and soft power can be successfully combined into smart power and smart leadership.

Read full article by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. at: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/netgov/files/talks/docs/11_06_06_seminar_Nye_HP_SP_Leadership.pdf

Image source:  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A3D_Team_Leadership_Arrow_Concept.jpg

Author: Simone Panfili