Transcript of How to Effectively Manage Position Authority

Let's get started. My name is Jack McGuinness, and I'm the managing partner of Relationship Impact, a firm that is exclusively focused on helping teams, leadership teams, executive teams become more functional. And position authority, the role of the CEO, the role of a leader of any team is, as I've talked about in many of my other webinars, is very important, and the modeling of the behaviors that you want to embrace as a team, really important for the leader or the CEO to model those behaviors, and one of them is the authority you have as the CEO or the leader of your team. And so position power, position authority is a important construct in any business, in running a business. Most businesses aren't run as democracies, so the decisions have to be made, consequence has to be given, accountability has to be driven, and position authority is a natural construct.

So the focus of my discussion today will be more on overused position authority. So let's dive into it a little bit. Being a leader is a tough job, as I'm looking at most of you, and I am preaching to the choir here, but it requires a good deal of balancing, right? So there are a whole bunch of things, these are just a few that executives need to balance, and they need to balance risk with results. They need to balance, I've talked a lot about on these webinars, culture and performance. And what we're about to focus on today, is the balance of between being decisive in your approach, and using your position authority appropriately, and building an engaged team and an engaged organization. So that's really the focus here. So, but there's no question that CEOs have to continually balance and juggle a whole bunch of balls.

So with that in mind, position authority... I got to figure out where to put this, my face up there. But anyway, position authority is like I said, a necessary construct, no question about it. CEOs or executives on a leadership team, service agents for key stakeholders, the board, investors, their employees, themselves as owners, for example, they're responsible for establishing and setting direction, of course, with the help of their leadership team. They're ultimately accountable for success or failure of their organizations, and by default, as leaders, there's a bunch of demands put on you, and demands for effectively using your authority to make decisions on competing strategic initiatives, or strategic direction. And it's important that you build and empower a strong senior team.

So, balancing the effective use of authority with empowering your team are some of those balancing acts that senior executives... And it's not only CEOs. Most of the work that I do is focused on working with senior executives and CEOs as the leader of teams, but you all, as senior executives, all lead your own teams. So, and this is no different, balancing your position authority as the leader of your span of control, of your organization, with building and empowering your team are two important roles that leaders need to model.

So overused position authority, from our perspective can be quite dangerous. It can impact empowerment. You say you want to empower your team, but you overuse your authority, and skip levels, and make decisions that are supposed to be the decisions of your direct reports, and that can get in the way. It can over time, diminish innovation, because why contribute to discussion at a team, if the leader is actually going to step in and make many of the calls, or even indirectly influence those calls? Over time, again, it saps energy and commitment, again, if we're overusing our authority. It can have an impact on trust as well over time, because if you're stepping on the toes of your direct reports over, and over, and over again, either intentionally or unintentionally, your direct reports can feel like you don't trust them, and that becomes a vice versa issue as well.

And perhaps most importantly, it hurts early warning. And what I mean by that, is that if you overuse your authority and you become sort of the king or queen figure, then downstream, your direct reports are less likely to bring things to you that may be important in the disability decision making realm, for example. So there's no question that we've seen this in our almost 11 years in business now, in working with close to a hundred or so executive teams, that overused position authority can be very, very detrimental to any organization.

So position authority is sometimes overused, right? And oftentimes, it's intentional, right? Because you have an autocratic leader that just lives by, "I said so." Often, "It's I know better. I ran sales. I ran manufacturing, so I know, and I know better than you, so I get to decide," and just ultimately, "I'm in charge, so what I say goes." And while that in effect, is ultimately the case, what we've seen is that autocratic type leaders are less effective in their organizations, are much more... How should I put this? Have a tougher time in terms of the cultural part of stuff, and overtime, it can impact results as well, because of the early warning piece, because of the impact on innovation, because of the impact on empowerment, for example.

Fortunately, from our perspective, most times, overused position authority is often unintentional, and many CEOs, many executives don't even realize that they're over overdoing it. Stress and pace get in the way. For example, we saw in the beginning of the pandemic, when folks were switching to remote workforce, and there was a lot of stress on the organizations, we saw some leaders, sometimes rightly so, stepping in and grabbing the reins, and sometimes overdoing that, and taking away the reins of their direct reports. So stress and pace can have a unintentional impact on use of authority.

World bias view, and what do I mean by that? That has a lot to do with a whole bunch of stuff, like where I came from, what organizations I've come from in the past, where I grew up, what schools I went to, all those kinds of things. World bias view tends to get in the way, and we don't even know it. We say, "Well, obviously that's the course of action we should take, and I can't even believe you're bringing up some other course of action." So, and that bias sometimes cuts into our relationships with our direct reports, and we don't even know it's getting there.

Avoidance is another thing, and we see this quite a bit, and this has to do with, I know there's a problem. I know we have a challenge with a part of the organization. It might be, my CFO is just a draconian leader, and really having, really a souring impact on the departments that have to work with him. And I know it, I keep hearing it, but he does a good job in some other stuff, so I avoid addressing those issues. And in fact, I go beyond avoiding it when those issues are brought up by a colleague, even if they're brought up productively, I may even lash out, and hate him or her for bringing those things up. And so, I avoid the issue, and oftentimes, we don't necessarily even know we're doing it. Sometimes we do, but sometimes we don't.

Insecurities and other things. Sometimes when we don't know and we think we should know, we kind of step in in places where we probably shouldn't, because we feel like we should be in charge and we're not necessarily relying on our direct reports as much as we should be. So I hope those things are clear. So the bottom line here is many times, overused position authority is unintentional, sometimes it's not.

So let's talk a little bit about what are some things we can do to... Or actually, let's first talk a little bit about some of the symptoms. What does it look like when we're unintentionally overusing our position power? First, diminished curiosity, creativity, objectivity, and empathy on my part as a leader. I may be a curious leader by nature, but because of stress or pace, my curiosity may be limited a bit. And sometimes that's natural and sometimes it's necessary, but oftentimes it's overdone, and we stop listening, for example. We stop having as much debate and discussion. We sometimes stop being as empathetic as we should with others. And yeah, that's some of the cues, that's one cue.

We engage in convincing rather than discussion. It switches to, we were having a discussion, but rather than really listening, in turns to, I'm just convincing you that I'm right. This is one we see quite a bit.

A slightly raised voice, or a more serious tone. I'm working with a CEO right now, who I believe is a very good leader, runs a pretty large trade association, and he's a good man, he's a good leader and has a very good heart. However, some of his direct reports, particularly a couple of new ones, are a bit intimidated by him because sometimes when he gets a tough situation put it in front of him, he gets a very serious tone. He maybe even raises his voice, and it may not necessarily be at the direct report, but at the situation, and that can be sometimes an intimidating construct by default.

So we deflect or ignore, as I talked about before, and we lash out at the messenger. So these are some of the cues of unintentional overuse, particularly when we're dealing with leaders that aren't really autocratic, but these are some of the cues that we see happen for when leaders are overusing their authority.

So how do you deal with intentional? I have not really a lot of great wisdom for that, other than just stop, and that obviously it goes beyond that. But when I'm working with a CEO that tends to be more on the autocratic side, first of all, they're not likely to hire us, but when they do, or if they do, we will try to put the mirror up and show them how that's potentially impacting their teams and their organizations. As you can imagine, oftentimes that's not very well received. So leaders that are autocratic, they're not as easy to necessarily work with.

So how do we effectively manage our position authority? There's a few things we think that can help you control those cues that we just talked about in the previous couple of slides. One is to talk about your leadership philosophy with your teams, and to talk about how you intend to make decisions as a team to talk about what is your tendency as a leader to... When do you think you will get more involved in a situation versus another? Is that situation dependent? Is that when performance is maybe taking a hit in a particular area? How much rope do you give to one... That's a bad analogy, sorry. How much leeway do you give to a direct report who might not be performing as well as another?

So having a discussion about your leadership philosophy as an individual executive and leader, is important to do as a CEO or as a head of a business unit, just so that folks have an understanding of you're coming from, and when you might get involved versus another... Because you might come from another organization that empowerment reigns free, and the executives don't really get involved in our stuff until stuff's going really south, and that may be different when you go to another organization.

So having a discussion about what your leadership philosophy is, is really important. And I also think it's very important for leadership teams in general, to clarify what their leadership philosophy is as a collective entity. Really important. I know it's sounds like a soft, maybe touchy-feely kind of thing, but I don't think it is because I think what it does is it clarifies where the leaders are coming from, and it gives you a sense for, "Hey, if you're going overbounds, you said your leadership philosophy was to be very much empowering and deal with stressful situations by engaging," and if you're not doing that, for example, "I'm open to hearing from my direct reports that I'm overdoing that, and can we rein that in a little bit?" So it gives the team, it gives the direct report and the CEO, or the executive an ability to get in each other's minds in terms of what that leadership approach looks like.

Another one we've talked about in many constructs before, is understanding what triggers you when you get stressed. Right? And so, it could be, bless me, I know I'm dealing with one senior executive general manager that really gets triggered by having things thrown at him at the last minute, and he does become a bit autocratic when that happens. And you could say that's his prerogative to do so, but what we're trying to do is get him to understand, "Okay, rather than jump to autocratic, why don't we back up a little bit, identify that that's something that really ticks you off, and make that there's some clarity around what will happen when you throw things at me at the last minute." So setting up some ground rules around that, for example. But understanding what triggers you and understanding how to react to those things in the moment, is really important.

Another executive I'm working with tends to lash out at his employees with a loud voice, and we're what we're working on is, hey, rather than lash out in the moment, why don't we take a step back and say, "Hey, I need 20 minutes to think about this," or "Let's talk tomorrow morning, and I want to come prepared with an open mind to have a discussion about this." And again, I'm not talking about constant performance issues, I'm talking about things that are happening in the moment that set you off, and knowing what sets you off can be a freeing thing to do, because when you know it, you can say, "Okay, I'm getting there. So what do I do to mitigate that a bit?"

I think the other thing is being open, honest, and maybe a bit vulnerable sometimes. And what I mean by that, is in the moment, or after the fact just saying, "Hey, look, I screwed up. I went too far. I lashed out at you, or I took over," or just acknowledging that you maybe have gone too far and made a mistake. I think there's nothing better than that in a leader, is to admit when maybe they've gone too far. Or maybe you're just being open and honest about, "Hey, we didn't really have a discussion about what triggers me to get myself a little bit more involved than I otherwise would," and that might be just impact on a customer or something like that. "When it impacts customers, I'm going to get myself involved every time." And maybe you don't like that as the direct report, but at least you know, right? And so, there's an open and honest discussion about how that potentially works.

And so, closing thoughts, this was one of our shorter webinars, but closing thoughts are position authority is not bad, it's a necessary organizational construct in all organizations, with most that I've worked with. It's just important for leaders to integrate that position authority with how they're building and empowering their teams.

So, anyone have any questions, any comments, or any observations on what we've talked about thus far? Just in the chat feature? Yeah, we got a thin crowd today. We were supposed to have about 20, and we wound up having about 10. So anyway, I will, as usual... Here's a couple things for you. Here's an offering. We have a leadership team recharge consultation. To learn more about it, just click on this link when I send out the slides, but we'll just have an hour work session where we'll get together with you and your team, talk about some best practices on leading a team, do a quick assessment of your team based on our model, and identify a couple of potential commitments that your team can make to get better. So that's an offer open for an hour virtual session. Our next webinar will be on August 25th, and it's Best Practices for Strengthening our One-on-One Discussions With our Direct Reports.