Managing Social Distance in "Flat" Companies. "Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?"

Organizations may have become flatter, but leaders still need social distance in order to take the big-picture view. Here are ways to combine friendship with leadership. Excerpted from Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?

Inventing distance

The concept of social distance derives originally from the German born sociologist Georg Simmel. Writing in the early twentieth century, Simmel conceived of social distance as a complex interpretation of sociability, as forms of distance in both a geometric and a metaphoric sense. In modern social science, it has increasingly been seen as a measure of intimacy between groups and individuals. In turn, the degree of intimacy directly affects the degree of influence that one individual may have over another.

by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones

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