John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Personal Success

Idea 71: What leaders need to know

‘You have that in your countenance which I would fain call master.’‘What is that?’‘Authority.’

Shakespeare, King Lear

There are broadly three kinds of authority at work:

1. The authority of position – job title, badges of rank, appointment.
2. The authority of knowledge – technical, professional.
3. The authority of personality – the natural qualities of influence.

Perhaps we can add now a fourth kind of authority – moral authority. That goes to leaders who suffer the dangers, tribulations and hardships of their people and for their people. It is the personal authority to ask others to make sacrifices.

Because he had endured years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela acquired the moral authority to ask his fellow countrymen ...