"You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That's assault, not leadership."
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
I came across this cartoon earlier today when I was researching networking on facebook for my Communication class. It reminded me of a quote from Eisenhower I remembered hearing and got me to thinking about how a leader motivates others effectively.
In class we learned that empowerment is achieved by conveying faith in group members and in doing so enabling the involvement of group members. Threatening someone or "hitting them over the head" doesn't sound to me like you're conveying faith in them. I feel like its all too often conveyed in movies that the only way to get something done is to threaten another person. A real leader, in my opinion, can get others to get stuff done without threatening them. I don't think I have ever resorted to threats to encourage people when I've been in a leadership position in the past. However I don't think I've made a big enough deal of empowering others in those situations. From now on I'm going to focus on making it a priority to empower others to encourage them.
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