Understanding Informal Leaders In Your Organization (and Benefiting From Them)
Informal leaders can help take the load from formal leaders but it often doesn’t “happen” on its own.
Managers, supervisors, executives or any others with formal power and title within an organization can reap huge benefits from cultivating and developing existing informal leaders in their work units. Or, informal leaders can work against the formal leaders in the organization.
When informal leaders are working towards achieving the same vision and goals as the formal leaders (and the organization itself), they can take a tremendous burden from the backs of managers and formal leaders. Some of the leadership functions, and many management functions can actually be carried out informally by those without actual authority. This frees those with formal management responsibility to focus on what they, themselves can uniquely do.
Informal leaders have some capabilities that more formal leaders do not, simply because they do NOT hold a position of designated authority. They can say things, for example, to other team members that could not be said by a person in an official management role, and their ability to influence is slightly different, since informal leaders are often perceived differently than…
