What do you want to control?

WEDNESDAY - GOVERNANCE INSIGHTS

Governance Tip?#3?Balance Power and Authority with fair intentions

I've always been fascinated by the use of power - political power, positional power, personal power.

Part of the reason is the amount of time I spend supporting organisations to rebalance power so that the right roles in the business hold appropriate authorities to directly discharge their accountabilities to successfully deliver outcomes.

All of us at some point, have witnessed the best and worst use of power by Board Chairs and Board Members, Managing Directors, Executive Team Members and Business Owners.

In a lot of cases, Leaders demonstrating poor behaviours tend to generate a culture of fear, loathing, anxiety and distrust that may have short term immediate results but don't result or produce effective long outcomes for the organisation and rarely if ever contribute positively to the health and wellbeing of the people who worked within them.

In my experience, it appeared that some Board Chairs and Board Members, Managing Directors, Executive Team Members and Business Owners didn't really know where to play or how to lead in the true sense based on their role as opposed to the archaic sense -in other words, they used their positional power to rule over and control people to get things done.

It makes me wonder: what makes people want to control others? Is it that they want to control outcomes, and people are there to produce outcomes? Or was this the way they were led and taught to lead?

Using positional power to rule over and control people is not the answer and doesn't typically produce the best outcomes. It certainly doesn't create an environment where it harnesses each team members brilliance and motivates them to do their best.

These behaviors if left unchecked:

• are mirrored throughout the organisation and embedded into the culture (as senior Leaders set the tone from the top on what behaviours are acceptable)
• increases staff turnover, recruitment and retraining costs
• impact the organisations reputation - your key stakeholders including suppliers and customers see everything
• heavily increase sick leave and moral
• impact the psychological health and wellbeing of team members.

Allow me to I share a couple of important definitions:

The word governance from an old archaic definition literally meant to rule or control (don't believe me, check it out here). Control is to exercise restraining or directing influence over?or two have power over.

Of course, governance is defined very differently now - our definition of governance is the act of the right roles in the business defining, approving and holding lines of accountability as illustrated below.

Governing Boards are typically mandated to oversight, oversight is composed of “over,” meaning extending above (from a vantage point), and “sight,” meaning the faculty or power of looking or seeing.

Managing Directors/CEOs and Executive Teams are responsible for delivering the day-to-day operations of the business in alignment with the Board approved Strategic and Business Plan.

We find that applying the philosophy of what we call heart centred governing leadership is an effective way of realigning and balancing power and authority. This is applied by leaders holding those accountability lines in a way where they consider the interests of all stakeholders so that everybody wins versus leaders who use their power and positionality to control and dominate.

There are many characteristics of great heart centred governing leaders. They include fairness, accountability, operating with true intentions, integrity, transparency, authentically, responding and not reacting and creating true connections. There are many many others - feel free to check out our website to learn more at www.governancecollective.com.au.

Governing lines do not need to reinforce power and control on or over others - if you're interested in defining or rebalancing power and authority in your organisation, feel free to book in for a complimentary discovery session here.