Across the world, organisations realize that the era of the authoritarian leader has passed. What has really passed is the era where leaders expressly exhibit authority, and it has ushered us into an era where leaders mask it implicitly and subtly in their requests. In this context, what makes ordinary leaders extraordinary is their ability to hold authority without displaying it. It is not the power they can wield that makes them powerful, but their ability to not wield it even in the subtlest of ways.

Extraordinary leaders are resonant leaders. Resonance is the ability to inspire in others what has inspired the leader. We do not resonate with leaders when they quote an authority, or when they speak as an authority, but only when they speak in a way that touches an original voice in us. We resonate with what leaders say when it resounds in us. Resonance happens not because a leader has said something, but because what has been said is found to be true inside of us too. Resonant leaders play the infinite game.

There’s a wonderful example James P. Carse gives us in his widely influential book, Finite and Infinite Games, which enables a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. He says, “The opposite of resonance is amplification. A choir is the unified expression of voices resonating with each other; a loudspeaker is the amplification of a single voice, excluding all others. A bell resonates, a cannon amplifies. We listen to the bell, we are silenced by the cannon. When a single voice is sufficiently amplified, it becomes a speaking that makes it impossible for any other voices to be heard.”

“We do not listen to the loudspeaker for what is being said, but only because it is all that is being said…There is no possibility of conversation with the loudspeaker”

This is a pitfall we should be aware of as leaders. It is easy to be the leader who slips in commands within requests; it is easy to be the average leader. It takes a high level of awareness to be a resonant leader. If we are leaders, which ones do we choose to be? Do we act as the bell or the cannon? Do we inspire listening or do we silence?

P.S. If you’d like to explore more about how you can build resonance into your interactions and relationships to unleash high performance, let’s have a conversation.