Three Stages of Leadership

Hello leaders and followers

A quick thought about levels of leadership.  There are three stages or levels of leadership because there three stages of followership.  There are three stages of followership because there are three stages of developing independence. 

1. The employee needs to know what to do, so you tell them what to do.
2. The employee needs more independence, so instead of telling them what to do in each situation, you give them a policy, and that policy tells them what to do in each situation.
3. The employee needs even more independence and can create his own policy, so instead of giving him a ready-made policy, you give him values, goals, and resources, authority and responsibility. They can come up with their own policy or strategy. 

This idea must have come from a combination of three things: (1) being a parent and parenting, (2) reading popular business/management books, and (3) thinking about AI and designing intelligent agents. 

More later