Why “Covert Leadership”?
As change agents and bloggers, we exercise leadership behind the scenes. Some of us want to make change while flying “under the radar”. Covert Leadership describes these situations well. We were delighted when the domain name was available.
It turns out we are not the first to coin the term Covert Leadership. Henry Mintzberg writes about it in the 1998 Harvard Business Review article Covert Leadership: Notes on Managing Professionals (reprint available on Amazon). He attributes it to then-director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey, and describes it as “…unobtrusive actions that infuse all the other things a manager does.” (as opposed to traditional leadership actions like motivating and coaching). And particularly effective for managing professionals.
Luckily for us, Mintzberg’s premises are compatible with ours. His article is subtitled: “Knowledge workers respond to inspiration, not supervision.” … and “inspiration, not supervision” is precisely what our brand of Covert Leadership is about.
We hope the Covert Leadership blog inspires our readers to define their own success and actively make positive change!
