Break Through the Battle at Work to Legitimize your Leadership
Command and control leadership, utilized by military leaders for centuries, had fully evolved into “managerial” leadership by the middle of last century. It was effective in business at that time because access to information was slow and barriers to market entry were high.
It was believed that having reliable, rote processes that yielded a tangible output were more critical to success than having people think creatively or collaborate. In fact, the words creative and collaborative were hardly, if ever, mentioned early in my career.
It was 1982.
I was 16 when I started working in a locally well-known, established architectural firm. I remember marveling at our first fax machine and leading the charge to get our first memory typewriter (it was a big victory!).
While business was changing, it was not happening as quickly as it has in the last ten to twenty years, so command and control leadership was still the norm in most businesses.
Generally speaking, people at the top chose to rule through fear to stay there. Paths to progress were often blocked, because preserving the status-quo was essential to controlling the rate of change.
And then?
Hello Information Superhighway, Globalization, and Service-based Economy! Just maintaining the status-quo was no longer enough. Being flexible and responsive were growing business imperatives. Many business leaders didn’t see, or they ignored, the writing on the wall.
That was the 1990s.
Doing business today means we all operate in an informed, connected, and transparent market where change is constant and barriers to entry are low. To continue to be in business today and meet new expectations, companies must transform how they do business, and that transformation requires authentic leadership.
What is authentic leadership?
As Bill George, Senior Fellow — Harvard Business School, Former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and Author of Discover Your True North, so aptly addressed it,
“Authentic leadership is built on your character, not your style.”
That’s very clear. There’s a lot of research and many resources on how to become a more authentic leader, far too many to summarize here. Instead, consider these three key thoughts:
1. Demonstrate your high moral code. Show how you value honesty and equality. Bring genuine joy and interest to your work. Admit your mistakes. Tell the truth. Find a resource that will help you learn more about yourself. There are plenty available online, such as this one: Authentic Leadership Questionnaire.
2. Make better decisions. Put aside personal bias, ask for other perspectives, and consider how your decision will affect others. Consider using a framework for ethical decision-making (click here for one example.)
3. Strive for open relationships. Listen to feedback. Create connections through conversations. Tell the specific, genuine stories that highlight your track record of doing the right thing for the greatest good of all concerned. Check out this article on Forbes online for very helpful guidance on delivering your own authentic stories.
When done well, authentic leadership improves your opportunity to inspire “authentic followers” — those that have a sense of pride in belonging to your company and will engage in the formal and informal business practices that breed success.
This, of course, leads to an oh-so important question.
How do you know if authentic leadership is working?
The answer is directly related to what you want to lead people to do. In other words, what you want to accomplish.
Maybe it’s increasing employee retention, to reduce the cost of hiring and training. Maybe it’s encouraging self-directed behaviors such as taking initiative, being resourceful and creative in order to develop products or deliver services better or faster.
Think about other “people” areas in your company where authentic leadership could make the greatest impact or in some other way transform the organization that you can tie to specific goals.
Once you’ve identified those areas and goals, take a baseline measurement of what’s happening now. If your company is not currently tracking metrics in that area(s), make some estimates. Then, determine what data you’ll need to capture and track so you can measure changes in those metrics as you implement practices connected to authentic leadership.
How did sharing specific and genuine stories, making better decisions, and cultivating relationships help you inspire others to follow you toward the achievement of a goal?
When you can point to the data that shows the connection between your authentic leadership and reaching organizational goals, you’re well on your way to helping your company grow in meaningful, and decidedly positive, ways.
When authentic leadership is about an authentic leader creating a path to progress for authentic followers, it becomes an extremely valuable business practice.
It also legitimizes your leadership, without the drama that command and control leadership “tactics” can create.
And that’s how business is evolving today.
About Me: I work with business leaders to help them do well by doing good in all aspects of their businesses. You can learn more about that here. I’ve had leadership roles in client services, new business development, and marketing; I’ve worked in boom and bust economies, with cooperative and contentious clients, and alongside helpful and hurtful colleagues. Drawing on these experiences and always looking toward the future, I’m excited to help business people redefine success beyond a singular pursuit of profit. Mom to two by birth and two by marriage, I live in Bucks County, PA with my fun and wonderful husband and our four dogs of all sizes and strange habits.
