While position provides formal authority, effective leadership requires personal authority built through demonstrated competence, trusted character, and invested relationships. Position alone produces compliance; personal authority produces commitment. Followers follow positional leaders because they must; they follow leaders with personal authority because they choose to. Build personal authority through showing competence—making good decisions, achieving results, demonstrating you know what you are doing.
Build it through character—being fair, consistent, trustworthy. Build it through relationship—knowing your followers, investing in them, building history together. The combination of positional and personal authority produces effective leadership. Position provides structure; personal authority provides substance.
If you have position without personal authority, you can compel but not inspire. Develop the personal dimensions that make positional authority effective.
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