What is the difference between ruling and leading

Democracy is not in itself a religious value, but it is the best way we know of preserving the religious values of freedom, justice and the rule of law. Judaism and Christianity, in their different ways, temper the will to power by insisting that it respect the dignity of the powerless. God asks us to plead the cause of the oppressed, as Nelson Mandela has done this week.

We believe that rulers and ruled alike are in the image of God. And out of these beliefs came the most revolutionary of all ideas to have humanized power, namely that leadership is not about ruling people but about serving people. Pre-order here. If the prophets of the Hebrew Bible came back to guide liberal democracies and anxious citizens through this difficult time, but first they studied modern history and social science, this is the book they would write for us.

Democracy is not in itself a religious value, but it is the best way we know of preserving the religious values of freedom, justice and the rule of law Judaism and Christianity, in their different ways, temper the will to power by insisting that it respect the dignity of the powerless.

While this solution to the governance conundrum can buy a family enterprise several decades of stability, it ultimately can sow the seeds of its own destruction. Single leaders can be narcissistic, autocratic and destructive.

They often threaten continuity by acting in secrecy, brokering private deals with stakeholders that can compromise the trust of the group. Systems held together though an individual are particularly vulnerable when the leader's physical and mental capacities begin to wane in late adulthood.

As the tragic story of C. Seabrook of Seabrook Farms and of countless others suggest, an arbitrary family enterprise ruler can trample over the dreams of the next generation and squander the promise of continuity. And so the age-old debate between centralized personal authority vs. An analysis of the history of family companies that have been around for many generations suggests that these organizations often experience a back-and-forth between periods when the shareholders are integrated through structures participating actively in assemblies, councils and boards and periods of minimal structure in which a single leader emerges, consolidates authority and holds the system together.

This history also suggests that the transition periods between governing through structure and those in which a leader predominates can be particularly precarious for family companies.

This is because, if the emergent or the outgoing leader refrains or, worse, abdicates from leading while the structure itself is not fully functioning and empowered, no one is making the decisions. The system degenerates into a state of rudderless inertia in which fundamental strategic and operational choices go unattended.

Why and how do these swings between integration through structure or through a leader occur? Under what conditions is one solution for integration more effective than the other?

What role does the cultural context play in ensuring the viability of one form of integration or the other? What are the leadership behaviors needed to move the system from one mode to the other?

What can families do to manage the downside risks associated with these transitions? These are the questions that preoccupy much of my current thinking on the complexities of sustaining complex family enterprises across generations.

How families sustain the integration and commitment of their shareholders over time is very significant, since many family companies here in the U. My sobering conclusion is that no solution is perfect or eternal. Quite the contrary, there are dialectics associated with "governing" integration through structure and with ruling integration through a leader that must be anticipated and managed.

Governance must be approached as a lifelong process rather than as an engineering problem for which there is a lasting "silver bullet" solution. The reality is that families like their businesses are continually evolving. Owners and their descendants age, some die, new ones are born, some marry and some divorce, some stay local and many move away.

Every effective solution to the governance and integration of owners is but a temporary equilibrium that buys the proprietary family periods of stability in the long-term journey across generations.

Inoculating families to this reality and getting them ready for the inevitable periods of transition is critical. In a way, the challenges associated with the transitions from ruling to governing have been well documented in our field. What would happen if you stopped allowing them to do so? Rulers are often called leaders in the news. This is an unfortunate sleight of hand used to conflate the two and make it seem that our rulers are chosen, when in fact they are not.

Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! Skip to content Send him mail. Rulers Rulers are those who rule. Leaders Contrasted to rulers, leaders are those who lead.

Final Thoughts Why should we care? Liked it? Support this contributor on Patreon! Written by Skyler J. Collins Editor Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary. Episode — The Naugler Support Effort 0h30m.

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