Having Authority or Being Authority?

Having authority requires little more than a title and the power to punish and reward. As Dr. Laurence J. Peter so cleverly pointed out in his 1968 best-seller "The Peter Principle", people often rise to the level of their incompetence. Most of us have worked for people who have authority by virtue of their longevity, or their corporate/political gamesmanship, or who hoard, withhold, and distort information, etc.

Being authority requires "authenticity", empowerment skills, and genuine wisdom (expertise). Authenticity means letting your behavior, as you execute your jobs, be informed by your personal values and ethics, rather than solely from the norms of your company or society.

When we are being authentic we strive for "knowing" or understanding. We share information and ideas, focusing on goals that support the corporation's goal of returning value to the stakeholders, while also supporting our own desire for personal growth and for doing meaningful work.

It is my contention that, corporate cultures that encourage and reward authenticity have lower employee turnover and are better able to recover from catastrophic circumstances like the current recession.

Leaders Empower Their People

In these difficult times it’s important to remember that your most important asset goes home to their family every night. As Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, said in this Sunday’s NYTimes:

"You have to, in your own life, get people to want to work with you and want to help you. The organizational chart, in my opinion, means very little. I need my bosses’ goodwill, but I need the goodwill of my subordinates even more. Because they can make it easy for me to get information...

"Life is always about contracts that you make with people. Very few of them are written. Most of them are implicit, and most of them evolve out of a course of dealing and understanding. And if you are good for your people, they’ll be good to you, and help you and help propel you up in your career.

"By the way, being good to them doesn’t mean you pay them more or you’re more liberal, or you let them get away with things. Most people, what they want is to be better. They want to work for a great organization. They want to feel good about themselves. They want to not so much get promoted, as be promotable. They want to evolve. And if you’re the kind of person that they think will help them do that, they’ll give you a loyalty that’s the most sincere kind of loyalty." - Lloyd Blankfein

(Read the entire NYTimes Interview)

Winning

Saw this great quote from Jimmy Carter - "Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent."

I once heard Carter interviewed about his work as a mediator in such seemingly hopeless causes. The gist of what I remember was that the only outcome he really championed, the "win" he sought, was to get each side to actually listen to their adversary, and find any speck of empathy they could. His main tool? Getting each "side" to actually speak the point of view of the other side, whether they thought it had validity or not. Carter seemed to be saying that mutual understanding was the desirable outcome, the big win.

Healthy Relationships Improve Productivity

It seems to me that the real work of management is relationship -- relationship with vendors, customers, those whom you manage and those who manage you.

Savvy business leaders have always known what scientific research has now proven beyond dispute: from the executive office to the assembly line, employees who have healthy relationships are more productive. What's on the flipside of that coin? The downstream effects of unhealthy relationships include loss of productivity, absenteeism, noxious attitudes and even accidents on the job.

Could your company benefit from a program that makes it possible for your people to get along better on the worksite and, at the same time, enrich their home life?

No one need settle for a toxic relational environment--on the job or in the home. The hazardous waste of noxious relationship dynamics can be cleaned up. Your workplace can become a delightful place to be. This is my specialty.

Contrary to what most people believe, healthy relationships do not happen by chance. They happen when people have the required skills and attitudes, and when they consistently make a choice to speak and act in ways that promote healthy relating. We now know that people can learn communication skills that foster individual and corporate excellence.