Perspectives are taken from a point of reference. The executive leadership needs the top-down perspective to understand the structure and process of the whole organization as a functioning organism. The line leadership needs the bottoms-up perspective in order to manage local complexity inside and outside the team. Staff operate at all levels and need to understand the context of their job and its role in the local ecology of work as well as its place in the overall organizational network structure.
Leaders identified formally as direct solid-line managers of employees constitute the fixed hierarchy of accountability, but that interlocked management structure is only part of the network’s true leadership structure. The view of “relative leadership” is derived from the perspective of working staff looking up one level (1°) to the supervisory team leadership (TL) position, who in turn links to an executive sponsor 2-degrees of separation away.
This section is about identifying the real network of team leaders that hold the working organization together. Do you know who your leaders are?
Top-down Perspective
Each link is 1° of separation between two nodes.
Each whole/part link is 1-level of separation between leader-member nodes.
Two points of reference (POR), looking from whole to part, and looking from part to whole.
“Fixed” leadership of hierarchical accountability is defined from the top-down and found in the interlocked set of managers with direct (solid-line) employee reports. The formal power of the organization is in the hands of these jobs, the decision-makers “at the end of the day.”
“Relative” leadership is defined from the bottom-up, identifying 1-degree team leaders and 2+degree executive team leaders through memberships that can in.clude matrix reports, specialized teams, and contractors. This is the real leadership network of the organization, with the hierarchical core of managers.
