How to become an Effective Leader 
Janel Rodriguez

The language of leadership is not just verbal, how do you think and act like a leader? Dr. Canute Thompson, lecturer, author & Co-Founder of The Caribbean Leadership Re-Imagination Initiative (CLRI), told us more on #MoneyMovesJa with EXIM Bank. Dr. Thompson previously referred to the tripartite model of leadership: Modeling, Respect and Motivation. To this he added three elements: Alternative Thinking, Courage and Influence.

Alternative Thinking

Alternative thinking as a language of leadership posits that there are many ways to solve problems.  The leader is expected to create opportunities to allow staff to express other ideas to solve problems in the organization. You’ll find that when we bring people into the space, lots of ideas are generated. 

“We have been led in many cases to believe that there are no solutions to the problem we face,” Thompson stated.  “When Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan ran the world, they created a neo-liberal agenda which basically stated that there was only one way to make developing countries succeed.” Under Thatcher and Reagan, the acronym “TINA”, which stands for, “There Is No Alternative” became popular. The two world leaders began pushing the economic model of low taxes, cutting back on social services, and giving the business sector freedom to do what they want. They described this as the only viable path to economic success. Thompson compared this to cases in which managers of small organizations may see that they need to solve a problem and believe that there is only one way to do it. He discourages leaders from thinking along that line.

Courage

Thompson emphasized that  having that courage to go where others have not gone is important for a leader.  He stated that courage is connected to the willingness to pursue alternatives.

“Think about great world leaders and you’ll see that one of the qualities that they possess is that they were fearless, to varying degrees,” Thompson said. “Courage and leadership go hand in hand because leaders are gonna be solving new problems, opening new horizons, and contending with opposition.”

“We hardly produce spectacular results when there are no opposing forces,” he noted, sharing a lesson from his mother.  “If a bird rises against the strong headwind not only in spite of the wind but because of the wind, then an opposing force can become a lifting forced if faced from the right angle.” 

Influence

Effective leaders rely less on power and more on influence to produce results, said Thompson. 

“You can’t bully people into respecting you. They may fear you but they won’t respect you,” he noted. “You can’t bully people into being contented about the organization or believing in the orgnization.  You can’t bully them into doing the right thing.” 

Thompson explained that if leaders attempt to force individuals to respect them.

“You might succeed in getting them to comply for a time if they’re watching but the moment your back is turned, they won’t,” he said.

The author stated that influence which involves touching peoples’ hearts and bringing them to believe is how you bring them into the sphere of what the organization is doing. According to Thompson, there are three ways in which we can influence people.

Three paths to influence:

1. Helping  to see the big cause, to see the large agenda of which they are part. The leader should help staff to see that they are contributing to making something that matters to them
2. Communicate. Finding the right time, the right space and the right language to explain the bigger picture.  “A lot of projects fail not because it wasn’t the right idea, but because it wasn’t communicated to others effectively,” he noted.
3. Showing people how valuable they are to the cause. Helping people to see their role in the bigger picture, their role in the organization.

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