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)