Leadership, Empowerment, and Formal Authority

When it comes to leadership in organizations, Riaz and Haider (2010) stated it well that effective leadership is critical for organizational growth and better performance. With today’s high paced, complex, globalized society, there are “almost as many definitions [of leadership] as there are persons that have attempted to define it” (Gandolfi & Stone, 2016). I must say I’m no exception to this…

While there is no universally accepted definition of leadership, there are certain leadership characteristics that trend across multiple business and academic publications, including:

• Leaders influence. This takes communication and critical thinking skills.
• Leaders motivate. They have a vision and garner authentic support.
• Leaders know how to properly incentivize. Many studies show incentivization should not always happen via monetary gain. Financial rewards, in my opinion, tend to be hygiene factors and don’t work well to incentivize over the long term. Instead, use public praise, enable greater autonomy, provide opportunities for growth and learning, etc., as incentivizing techniques.

Regardless of the style of leadership used, the concept I’ll focus in the remainder of this article relates to formal authority and leadership. Formal authority typically comes with a title, such as Manager, Director, and C-Levels, where the title implies and demands leadership. For the purposes of this article, I wanted to re-assert something that frankly I’ve temporarily forgotten - that you don’t need to have formal authority to be a leader.

Nowhere in the three leadership characteristics above is there a mention of formal authority. Leaders influence and motivate, using their emotional intelligence skills to determine incentivization which in turn further motivates.  Leadership can happen at any level.

Developing Leadership Capabilities through Empowerment

As managers and executives with formal authority, persons with these titles need to create an environment where leadership flourishes. If I may be blunt, that means giving away some of the control and authority that you’ve presumably worked so hard in earning your title. This means empowering people.

When I was a new manager many years ago, I thought I had to be in control. All it did was alienate good talent and our group floundered. If it wasn’t for two brave co-workers to call me out, I wouldn’t have shifted from being a directive manager to a leader, and the non value-added behaviors would have likely continued. I have found by empowering people, not controlling them, it generates better results.

Empowering people leads to more satisfied workers, greater organizational commitment, better complex-problem solving skills, better performance, and groups that tend to work harder with greater persistence when challenged (Carmeli et al., 2011). So why may persons with formal authority not embrace the power in empowerment? For those without formal authority, what holds them back from gaining empowerment and/or leading? Below are some suggestions to address these questions.  

If you are in a role where you have formal authority, such as a manager or executive, consider the following to increase empowerment:

1.     Create the environment where your people feel comfortable stepping up and offering opinions.

2.     Once you empower, don’t take it away. This generates greater distrust and apprehension.

3.     Empowerment doesn’t mean free-range employees. Discuss and agree (this means you do not tell and they accept) on outcomes and how you’ll keep each other in the loop with progress.

4.     Listen to opinions and adjust. Don’t just ignore them.

5.     Be willing to experiment within reasonable boundaries. This doesn’t necessarily mean throw everything away. While sometimes you need start from scratch, begin with thought-out experiments with clear end conditions. Make small yet meaningful adjustments along the way.

6.     Ask your people – how am I doing? It takes courage to solicit feedback. I suggest executing an anonymous survey without you in the room in the beginning, especially if you don’t regularly ask for candid feedback. Once you’ve established deeper trust, transparency, and openness, then use a real-time conversational feedback approach.

7.     Increase self-awareness. Perform leadership self assessments – there are many out there. Ask trusted co-workers to also do the self assessment on you to expose any biases you might have; you may not be as empowering as you think you are. Instead of focusing on a score (e.g. “I got score Z, so I’m doing OK.”), use the results to inform you of next steps you can take.

8.     Challenge yourself with this question: does there only need to be one (or a limited set of) leader(s)? Some research highlights the benefits of communal leadership (Wellman, 2017; Latham & Ernst, 2006).

If you are a person without formal authority or report into someone with greater formal authority than you, consider:

1.     Stepping up. Ask your superior for that project you’ve been wanting to do. Build a case using words that they would resonate with. You may not be empowered unless you ask for it.

2.     Speaking up. It takes courage and tact to offer a contrary or alternate opinion or idea. You may need to find a champion, whom your superior respects and listens to, to help make your case.

3.     Supporting each other. See previous point. It takes courage to speak up. Support your colleagues in the moment, not after.

4.     Delivering on what you ask for. This builds credibility.

5.     Challenge yourself with this question: Why do I want to be a leader? If it is primarily for the title, pay, or other similar characteristic, you may need to do some further reflection.

As I’ve said in past articles, there are no silver bullets. There is no one easy recipe where we can just follow it by the numbers. One pathway to becoming a more effective leader is through empowerment. Learning how to lead without formal authority takes work and making yourself vulnerable. Likewise, persons with formal authority need to practice how to empower, which, at least for me, was not an easy thing to do in the beginning. But with open, honest, and respectful conversations, together we can increase leadership capabilities at any role regardless of level and/or title in an organization.  

References:

Carmeli, A., Schaubroeck, J., & Tishler, A. (2011). How CEO empowering leadership shapes top management team processes: Implications for firm performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 22, 399-411. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.02.013

Gandolfi, F., & Stone, S. (2016). Clarifying leadership: High-impact leaders in a time of leadership crisis. Review of International Comparative Management, 17(3), 212-224.

Latham, G. P., & Ernst, C. T. (2006). Keys to motivating tomorrow’s workforce. Human Resource Management Review, 16, 181-198.

Riaz, A., & Haider, M.H. (2010). Role of transformational and transactional leadership on job satisfaction and career satisfaction. Business and Economic Horizons, 1(1), 29-38.

Wellman, N. (2017). Authority or community? A relational models theory of group-level leadership emergence. Academy of Management Review, 42(4), 596-617. doi:10.5465/amr.2015.0375