3 Command is not leadership

Many people will associate ‘command’ with uniformed services, such as the military, police, or fire and rescue services. In other kinds of organisations, command is given a name more palatable to the context, such as ‘direction’ or ‘strong direction’. In organisations that favour command, it is assumed that information will cascade down a hierarchy from senior to junior levels. Orders are given and followed. Command is routinely confused with leadership. Indeed, senior people who like to give lots of orders are often described as showing ‘strong leadership’, ‘leading from the front’, and so on. Yet in practice what they are really doing is commanding.

Figure 6 Command is about issuing orders, whereas leadership can often involve breaking them

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This is a photograph of a post-it note stuck to a wall. The note says ‘follow the rules!’.

Figure 6 Command is about issuing orders, whereas leadership can often involve breaking them

As Grint (2005) states, more often than not, orders in command structures are obeyed because there is a shared understanding that what is at stake is serious, and there is no time for discussion or debate. Procedures are followed, or the experience and status of the person commanding is followed, or both. Command can also be common in knowledge-rich occupations, e.g. those relating to science and engineering. In this context, the model is one of less experienced people learning by observing and assisting accomplished professionals. Command can be essential, as it can offer decisive and necessary action, and it can ensure that knowledge is passed between generations of specialist workers. It can also be efficient in times of emergency, when there is no time for debate. However, command can be abused by unethical people. Claiming that there is a crisis can be a trick used by people in charge of organisations in order to secure more wealth and/or power.

You will now consider how command is enabled in organisations.

Having delved at length into what leadership is not, you will now consider how leadership might coexist with management and command.