Exercising leadership: it's all about relationships.

• Author: Linsky, Marty
• Position: LINSKY ON LEADERSHIP

Structurally legislatures are unique institutions. Unlike most corporations and businesses, they're basically flat. The members are accountable only to the voters. No House speaker or Senate president can fire a legislator.

To get any business done, legislatures had to create some modest hierarchy--speakers and Senate presidents, majority and minority leaders, and committee chairs. The formal authority that goes along with those positions differs from state to state, from czar-like to facilitator. Even in states where power is very centralized, the essentially flat structure, plus the external accountability, creates opportunities for lawmakers to exercise leadership daily. Recognizing those opportunities and then skillfully taking advantage of them may take some practice.

Be an Expert

Leadership from members with little or no formal authority typically comes in two forms. There are the young, new backbenchers whose dogged persistence and passion for an issue enable them to steer a bill to enactment. Then there are the thoughtful, seasoned veterans who, by dint of some combination of their experience, personality, credibility and expertise, are able to influence legislation disproportionately to their formal authority.

When I was in the Massachusetts House, I knew two such people. One was Connie Kiernan, a Democrat who lost a contest for speaker. He transformed himself from just another ambitious wannabe into a diligent, hard-working lawmaker, a policy wonk, who made any legislation affecting the administration of justice his specialty. His judgment was respected by House members across party and ideological lines on a wide range of issues. I remember him sitting in the back of the chamber, almost always with a crowd of colleagues asking advice, getting his interpretations of legislative language, and, in general, learning from the master.

The other was Mary B. Newman, who in 1968 was the last Republican elected from Cambridge. She made herself the resident expert on the House rules and therefore indispensable to all members when the speaker would try to use the rules to thwart or advance some legislation over the objection of whoever was at the microphone at the moment.

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She was an equal opportunity expert, and in return, grateful members of all persuasions were sympathetic to legislation that was important to her. I recall standing at the microphone in the well of the chamber on more than one occasion, turning to...