Alexander Madsen Sandvik

In most leadership literature knowledge and hierarchy go hand in hand. Leaders were assumed to possess superior knowledge about the tasks to be conducted. In addition, they had authority, and their instructions were supposed to be followed more or less as delivered. This is changing. Today, subordinates often know more about their tasks than their leaders, and traditional power relationships have faded away. Also, subordinates are to a substantial degree autonomous workers with ample opportunities outside the organization because of their expertise. In this situation, when leading knowledge workers, traditional leadership theories may not work, and if applied, they could do harm rather than stimulate effective employeeship.

My PhD thesis is in leadership, investigating leading experts and knowledge workers. How do you lead a subordinate who knows the task better than yourself? This is both a challenging and important issue for several reasons. First, the leader must find new ways to influence the subordinate to attain goals that are in alignment with organizational goals.  Second, the leader must find new ways to motivate autonomous knowledge workers who are more interested in their work and impressing their peers than their employer. Leadership successfully addressing these challenges is expected to result in productivity, quality and innovativeness generating sustainable competitive advantage.