Joseph Nye The Powers To Lead Analysis

From the beginning of civilization, leaders and their leadership structures have been utilized to organize groups of people. But what makes an effective leader? In Joseph Nye, “The Powers to Lead,” a leader is one who mobilizes their followers to action to achieve shared goals. Therefore, leadership is a relationship between the leader and its followers. Reaching a collective goal is difficult, so leaders use soft and hard power to do so. Soft power is working alongside others in an equal side to side relationship by using negotiation, gathering input, getting consent and persuading the followers to reach a common consensus. Hard power is a hierarchical relationship that uses command, coercion, control, and force. Further, soft power is correlated with the power of charisma. Charisma is an approach of leadership that appeals to followers through focused action, conviction, and vision. They capture loyalty by using the emotional element in symbols. Leaders need particular skills that accompany hard and soft power. The three main skills for soft power are the following: emotional intelligence, communications, and vision. Hard power use two main skills: organizational and political. Contextual intelligence is …show more content…
Both are methods to achieving collective action whether through attraction or coercion. They also could be used together as they reinforce and interfere with each other. For example, in 1978, Jim Jones persuaded nine hundred members of the Peoples Temple to commit a mass suicide. Nye states, “Jim Jones used soft power to persuade his followers to commit mass suicide, he had an inner core of about eight henchmen who used a degree of coercion on followers who threatened to defect” (41). His use of henchmen was hard power. Also, military officers use the soft power of charisma and the hard power of their command-control position. Therefore, soft power is multilateral and hard power is unilateral which can be used