Content
- What traits should an informal leader have?
- Types of informal leaders
- Absolute leader
- Anti-leader
- Leader-organizer
- Emotional Leader
- What should a manager do if a pronounced informal leader appears in the team?
- Constructivism
- Destructivism
Hello, dear readers! Observe any group of people: kids playing on the playground, teenagers in the classroom, adults at work - in each of these communities there will be a charismatic person who influences others. Often, the official status of this person does not give him the right to lead his comrades - formally they are on the same level of the hierarchical ladder. At the same time, the informal leader is the most authoritative in the team, and no one challenges his right to lead.
As a rule, the personal qualities, energy and active position of an informal leader give him no less, and sometimes even more power than a formal leader - a manager appointed by higher management - has. If team members are forced to obey the second, then they are ready to follow the first without coercion, obeying enthusiasm and their inner convictions.
Informal leadership can manifest itself on any scale. Some influence the life of their department, while others are able to attract millions and leave their mark on history - examples of this are widely known. Among the most significant personalities, figures such as Sakharov, Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King are most often named - each of them was able to influence an entire state. That is, an informal leader is a very, very extraordinary person.
What traits should an informal leader have?
Human psychology is such that any member of the group dreams of being significant and influential. Naturally, everyone has their own vision and understanding of these processes, but both the top manager of the sales department and the plumber Vasily want to manage the situation in their environment. However, such aspiration does not always lead to success. The desire to become a leader is not enough - much depends on the personal qualities of the person.
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To become an informal leader, desire alone is not enough. The special potential to lead and organize is what distinguishes a person who is able to lead a group of people. At a minimum, the applicant must have the following qualities:
- Charisma - a person striving for leadership must be able to charm people, literally make them fall in love with his personality. Anyone who causes hostility among others, by definition, will never be able to rally the team around him.
- Sociability - in order to make contact, it is important to be able to feel the interlocutor and find common ground with him.
- Initiative - a person who avoids any manifestations of initiative and avoids responsibility is unlikely to be able to captivate others with his ideas.
- Extraordinary intelligence - being a particle of a gray faceless mass, it is impossible to rise above it. Do you want to become a leader? Be different from the rest! Develop your intellect, learn to quickly process incoming information and make innovative decisions.
- Oratory ability is not just about generating original thoughts and ideas. It is important to be able to convey them to others, to ignite the team with them. For this reason, a leader must be a good speaker.
- Character type - a quiet, thoughtful melancholic obviously loses to an active, explosive choleric. People tend to follow strong, active individuals who can charge everyone around with positivity.
- Outstanding ability in any area. Moreover, these do not necessarily have to be special talents related to your field of activity. Colleagues may pay tribute to your ability to play billiards, your virtuoso use of a six-string guitar, or your talent for baking incomparable pies.
A person who has these characteristics is likely to take a leading position in any team. You may not have all of these qualities at the same time. But even some of them provide a good chance to gain a foothold in the leadership position.
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Types of informal leaders
Depending on what character traits predominate in a person, he may belong to one or another type of leader. Here are four portraits of people who have the potential to lead.
Absolute leader
His statements are quoted, no one doubts the correctness of his actions, others strive to imitate him, and his orders are carried out quickly and unquestioningly. A person of this type is an extraordinary personality, possessing such signs of a leader as an innate talent for organizing and enormous charisma.
Anti-leader
Such a “leader of the pack” poses a considerable threat to management. Like an absolute leader, he has great influence on the team, but at the same time he burns with fiery revolutionary ideas, which he quickly infects those around him. An anti-leader is not afraid to express his point of view and enter into open confrontation if the leader does not support him. In the heat of the struggle for justice, he will not be afraid to put his resignation letter on the boss’s desk. But don’t rejoice - the brawler’s entire support group, sometimes constituting a good half of the company’s staff, may follow the brawler.
Leader-organizer
If there is an absolute leader in the team, the organizer has to be content with the role of “second fiddle”. As a rule, he does not have pronounced charisma, and therefore is not able to compete for first place with a bright personality. But he has no equal in planning and distributing tasks, as well as in generating original ideas and solutions. He has an understanding of how to best distribute tasks so that each employee works at their best. Often the organizer and the absolute leader form a tandem, which is the driving force of the entire team.
Emotional Leader
This is the most controversial personality of all. Such a person with the aspirations of a leader has remarkable oratorical abilities, generates dozens of non-standard ideas and can share them with colleagues for a long time and with inspiration. At the same time, he avoids risks and associated responsibility by any means. If his idea is criticized or asked to take responsibility for the proposed project, he will definitely find reasons for refusal.
What should a manager do if a pronounced informal leader appears in the team?
As a rule, having learned that a “gray eminence” rules the work collective, management begins to get nervous and figure out strategies and tactics to combat such a phenomenon.
In fact, the presence of an informal leader is not something critical that requires immediate intervention and expulsion of the impudent person who has encroached on the reins of power. But you shouldn’t pretend that there is no “second echelon of power” either. This is the position of a weak leader who is not confident in his authority and fears a rebellion from his subordinates.
First of all, you should find out what goals the unspoken leader pursues. There are cases when the actions of an authoritative employee destroy the team, but more often the opposite. Therefore, by making him his ally, the leader will only benefit from such interaction. To understand how to act correctly in your specific situation, first of all determine what line of behavior the informal leader follows.
Constructivism
A person who chooses a constructive type of behavior brings tangible benefits to the company. Under his leadership, newcomers quickly join the team, employees are highly productive, current tasks and projects are completed on time, without deadlines.
If your company has just such an informal leader, there is no need to oppose his authority. On the contrary, try to enlist the support of this person. An alliance with a leader is especially important if for some reason the team carries out your orders without much enthusiasm. Seeing that your decisions are supported by the leader, others will also respect you and your ideas.
Often, a manager, trying to win the favor of an informal leader, promotes him in his position. This move is not always correct. Before you sign the assignment order, talk to the employee and find out what he really wants to accomplish. Some enjoy leadership positions that allow them to fully realize their potential. And some do not at all seek to obtain the official status of a boss - they are quite satisfied with the current situation.
The Investigative Committee has filed charges for the murder of the leader of the Russian thieves' community
As Kommersant learned, employees of the Investigative Committee of Russia accused Igor Zhirnokleev (Zhirny), the “authority” of the Tagansky organized crime group, who is under investigation, and some members of his group of complicity in the murder of the unofficial leader of the Russian thieves’ world, Aslan Usoyan (Ded Khasan). According to investigators, bandits, ordered by Georgian thieves, were spying on the thief shortly before his murder. In addition, the Taganskys in the final version were charged with a dozen more serious and especially serious crimes, including organizing a criminal community and participating in it.
Due to the coronavirus epidemic, the final version of the charges took place in pre-trial detention centers, and not in the building of the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR). “At the same time, all precautions were observed,” Alexey Semenov, lawyer for crime boss Grigory Rabinovich (Grisha Tagansky), told Kommersant. “We were given protective suits, masks and medical goggles. The investigator was wearing the same equipment.” Grigory Rabinovich was directly charged in the Kremlin Central, and Igor Zhirnokleev was charged in the neighboring Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center. Defenders claim that the investigative actions took place in a calm atmosphere.
For Igor Zhirnokleev, the accusation of complicity in the murder of Aslan Usoyan, whom a sniper shot on January 16, 2013, at the exit of a restaurant on Povarskaya Street in Moscow, came as a surprise. According to the defense, the investigation has no solid evidence regarding this episode. However, suspicions about Zhirny’s involvement in the elimination of Aslan Usoyan arose in the fall of 2020. Then the ICR officers tried to interrogate the Taganskie leader about his participation in the murder of the kingpin, but Igor Zhirnokleev categorically refused to answer. And yet, the investigation managed to find out that Zhirny and a number of his gang accomplices, who had special equipment, were involved in spying on Ded Khasan.
Actually, because of the equipment that even law enforcement officers did not have at that time, they were involved in the murder of the thief.
The remaining episodes of murders were associated with the elimination of either associates who had lost confidence, or persons who in one way or another interfered with Igor Zhirnokleev and his accomplice Grigory Rabinovich in carrying out raider takeovers of enterprises, which the Tagansky leaders had been engaged in since the early 2000s. In particular, the Taganskys were finally accused of organizing and executing the murders of the general director of Rospishcheprom OJSC Valery Zhuravlev, financier Alexei Pokrovsky and lawyer of the Moscow department store Andrei Bralyuk.
Valery Zhuravlev was killed in February 2008, when he initiated an investigation into the raider takeover of his enterprise, in which members of the Tagansk organized crime group participated. And the financier Pokrovsky was killed because he disappeared with bills for $4 million, which Grigory Rabinovich gave him. By order of the latter, the bandits found Alexei Pokrovsky and took him to a prison house in the Orekhovo-Zuevsky district. They tortured him for a long time, and then killed him and buried his mutilated body in the nearby forest.
In turn, lawyer Andrei Bralyuk was severely beaten in February 2009 for fundamentally defending in arbitration courts the interests of the labor collective of Moscow OJSC, which fought against the raider takeover of the department store by the leaders of the Tagansk organized crime group. After the attack, Mr. Bralyuk lay in a coma for three months, but the doctors were never able to get him out. By the way, in the same 2009, department store employees sent an appeal to then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, asking him to protect them from raiders. And they even directly indicated that former member of the board of directors of the department store Vasily Grekov (he is now on the run), Igor Zhirnokleev and Grigory Rabinovich were involved in this. President Medvedev gave appropriate instructions to law enforcement officers, but they got to the Taganskys a little over a year ago, when the first arrests were made.
In addition, according to some reports, in the big Tagansky case there was an episode related to the murder of lawyer Natalya Vavilina in 2020. The direct perpetrator of the crime, Marat Yanbukhtin, is serving a 19-year sentence, and now the leaders of the organized crime group have been charged with organizing this crime.
The Taganskys want charges against them for old murders dropped
Grigory Rabinovich and Igor Zhirnokleev deny their involvement in the crimes they are accused of. The latter’s lawyer, Mark Kaverzin, told Kommersant that his client did not admit and does not admit any of the episodes. In turn, Grisha Tagansky’s lawyers reported that their client called the accusation not only absurd and far-fetched, but also “unrealistic, since this does not happen in life.” In particular, Grigory Rabinovich denies involvement in the murder of financier Pokrovsky, since the promissory notes that he had were allegedly invalid and of no value.
According to defense attorneys, the remaining members of the organized criminal community (OCC) will most likely also be charged with murder, banditry, document forgery, and participation in an organized crime group. After which the investigation will officially end and the defendants will begin to familiarize themselves with the case materials. But, the defenders say, this procedure will not be quick, since the file contains over 100 volumes.
Alexey Sokovnin
