Mrs. Nila Pratt was the informal leader in the management professor’s illustration, and Dr. Luce, the assistant dean, was the informal leader in the new dean’s organization. Why do certain individuals become the informal leaders in an organization?

Within an organization, there may be informal leaders—individuals who have no formal authority over others yet can influence the behavior of others. The story below points out how managers can use informal leaders to achieve desired objectives.

Dr. John Alvarez was hired to be the dean of continuing education for WilsonUniversity. Alvarez would be responsible for a large evening program of credit classes for part-time students. He inherited an efficient staff, along with Dr. Irvin Luce, the assistant dean (second in command), an administrator with many years’ experience at WilsonUniversity. Dr. Luce was to assist the dean in any way possible.

The new dean was experiencing his first taste of administration, and things were moving along fairly well. Yet the new dean felt his objectives were not being achieved as rapidly as he had hoped. To better equip himself for his new responsibilities, Dr. Alvarez enrolled in a management course in a neighboring university and found the course offered great advice.

One day, the professor of the management class lectured on the topic of the informal leader. The gist of the professor’s lecture was this:

An informal leader wields power in an organization, power of which the informal leader may not even be aware. When new challenges arise, workers tend to discover first what reaction the informal leader has to the new event. Once that knowledge is obtained, the group will usually follow the lead of the informal leader. Here is an illustration of the informal leader in action.

Ellsworth Livingston took over as principal of Longfellow Elementary School on August 10. Before classes had started, he had scheduled several informal get-togethers with his teaching faculty, mostly women. Rather than read bulletins and memos from the school district headquarters, Ellsworth went out of his way to learn as much as he could about the teachers. Without being obvious, Ellsworth carefully observed each of the teachers. Seeing them interact informally told him volumes about the social networks at LongfellowElementary School.

Ellsworth was especially interested in identifying the faculty’s informal leader. By the time classes began, he had zeroed in on Mrs. Nila Pratt, a third-grade teacher. How did Ellsworth determine that Nila Pratt was the informal leader? Here are the clues from Ellsworth’s observations.

When teachers clumped together for conversation during refreshment breaks, the biggest circle formed around Nila, and those in Nila’s circle would press her for opinions on everything. If Nila told a joke, it always received rumbling laughter. In open forums when Nila voiced an opinion, every teacher in the room turned around to see what she was saying. Also, in the open forum, other teachers would preface their remarks with a lead-in such as: “Well, it’s just like Nila says....” When Nila had her students working on an autumn display for the bulletin board, all the teachers came by to get ideas on how they should do their bulletin boards. On and on the episodes went. There was no doubt in Ellsworth’s mind that he had spotted the informal leader.