Interpersonal leadership is about inspiring and enabling others to do their absolute best together to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose. While the most effective strategic leaders think outside-in, the best interpersonal leaders take an inside-out approach to people. They enable others by giving them a structure or framework to guide their own thinking and action. They give or get them leverage to accelerate progress. And they give them confidence in their own motivation and strengths to fuel the spark of inspiration that’s already inside of them.
As I’ve written here before, the world needs three types of leaders – artistic, scientific, and interpersonal. Artistic leaders inspire by influencing feelings. Scientific leaders guide and inspire by influencing knowledge with their thinking and ideas. Interpersonal leaders, the focus of this particular article, lead other people.
The definition of leadership in the first sentence of this article is rooted in happiness. Happiness is good – actually three goods: doing good for others, doing things you are good at and doing good for you. Here are the connections:
“meaningful” shared purpose – good for others
“absolute best” – good at it
“rewarding” shared purpose – good for you