Although world business is undergoing historic changes, the prevailing view of what constitutes business leadership is stuck in the past. Generally, business leaders view leadership as an order-giving process. The word "leadership" itself comes from old Norse root meaning "to make go." Many leaders believe that they must "make" people go by ordering them to do things.

But today's new business realities are requiring new kinds of leadership, leadership that has very little to do with order giving. Organizations are more competitive when leaders don't make others go but instead have those others make themselves go — when employees are not ordered to do tasks but instead are in the frame of mind and heart that they want to do those tasks. That "want to" is the cutting edge of competitiveness.

Order-leadership in business has its roots in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. "Order" comes from a Latin root meaning to arrange threads in a weaving woof. The captains of the Revolution dealt with the relatively uneducated country people who flocked to their factories by ordering them where, how, and when to work. The most efficient and effective production methods resulted from workers being "ordered" or ranked like threads in the woof of production lines. Refined and empowered by the Victorian commercial culture, with its patriarchal power structure and strong links to Prussian military organization, the culture of the order-giver leader reached its zenith in the United States after World War II.

During the post-war years, many U.S. businesses were like ocean liners plowing through relatively calm seas, their leaders, like liner captains and mates, running things by getting orders from superiors, giving orders to subordinates and making sure that those orders were carried out.

But today, with competition increasing dramatically, with the volume and velocity of information multiplying, with the pyramidal structures of order-giving businesses flattening, leaders need skills not akin to ocean liner piloting but white-water canoeing. Order leadership founders where lines of authority are blurred, information proliferates, markets rapidly changing, and employees are highly skilled and educated.

A new kind of leadership, a new vision of leadership is needed — leadership based on the principle that the leader doesn't make others go by ordering them about but instead has them go by creating an organizational environment in which they prompt themselves to go.

This new leadership is: 1. Motivational. 2. Action-based. 3. Results-driven.

Motivational: Leaders do nothing more important than get results. But leaders can't get results themselves. They need the people they lead to get results. And the best way for them to get results is not to order them but to motivate them to take action that produces results. However, the English language misconstrues motivation. English describes the act of motivation as something one person does to another person. Leaders can't motivate anybody to do anything. We communicate — the people themselves motivate. They motivate themselves. Only they can motivate themselves. The motivators and the "motivatees" are the same people. We engage in the new leadership when we recognize that we are motivating people to get results only when we set up an environment in which

About the Author: The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. – and has worked with thousands of leaders worldwide during the past 20 years helping them achieve sizable increases in hard, measured results. Sign up for his free leadership ezine and get a free guide, "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at www.actionleadership.com