The term leadership gets tossed around in society quite a bit these days. It is often talked about, but ill-defined. It is taught, coached, and facilitated but lacks a universally agreed-upon methodology to refer to and execute on.
So what exactly is "leadership?"
In my humble opinion, leadership is the work that requires inspiring others in order to make progress on our toughest challenges.*
*This definition is inspired heavily by the work of the Kansas Leadership Center, https://kansasleadershipcenter.org/leadership-principle-5-leadership-is-about-our-toughest-challenges/
Authority, on the other hand, is quite different from leadership. Authority tends to be a position (when it is formalized - informal authority is a bit different). (Formalized) Authority is the position given to you by your organization or the people you serve. In other words, your authority is derived from the people who authorized you to handle the job.
But here's the irony; people in authority are often less likely to exhibit leadership due to their roles. The formal role of authority gives you power, and power tends to get in the way of using/flexing our leadership muscles. Those in authority tend to miss opportunities to lead because they work within their job descriptions. You are expected to hire and fire people in your position of authority. You are expected to manage the workflow of the people who authorized you. You are expected to take the escalation calls upward and handle them. In short - You are expected to do the hard work in a position of authority.
Notice a key distinction between the definition of leadership, and the description of authority:
leadership requires others in order to get the work done;
authority requires you to do the work.
That may sound counter-intuitive to some people. After all, if you hold a position of authority, you would have to delegate the work to your teams!
But think about "the work" from this perspective: to solve our toughest challenges (ex. climate change, diversifying our workforce, innovating in a tough economy, etc.) we tend to look to our authorizers to handle them. Climate change? That's the job of the "experts" and those we elected to do the job. Diversifying our workforce? That must be HR's job. Innovating in our tough economy? That's the job of the CEO, or the executive committee.
Authority is expected to do the work then the challenge is tough; Leadership requires everyone (including you) to do the work. Nobody is immune from the work that needs to be done when everyone takes on the responsibility of leadership.
So that begs the next question: what does leadership from a place of authority look like?
To answer this question, I believe it might be helpful to understand what the basic expectations of authority are. To me, positions of authority provide 3 core responsibilities:
Protection: Protect your team from external threats
Direction: Provide the problem definition & the solution
Order: This can be broken into 3 sub-categories:
Orientation: Orient your people to their roles
Conflict: Restore order when conflict arises
Norms: Maintain norms/status quo
Those in authority are expected to provide protection, direction, and order. It is a necessary part of the job. How could people get their day-to-day work done without the effort of authority to build and maintain the process? Efficient, technical work that requires expertise requires this.
But when the work gets tough, and expertise and authority are not enough to solve it? That's where leadership comes in.
Those in authority must then shift the paradigm of protection, direction, and order to something like this*:
Protection: Disclose external threats; limit internal threats by making leadership less risky for others (ex. protect dissenting voices, empower unheard voices)
Direction: Identify the challenge; frame key questions & issues; resist the allure of the quick fix and work longer on diagnosing the challenge
Order: Again, we can break this into 3 sub-categories:
Orientation: Disorient current roles (aka get people to think and act beyond their job title); resist orienting people too quickly; acknowledge loss(es) (name what may happen if progress is made versus shield people from knowing)
Conflict: Expose conflict or let it emerge (productively); name competing values (aka name elephants in the room, and say the hard things to ensure all viewpoints are on the table to consider)
Norms: Challenge norms or let them be challenged by your people
*Source: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Heifetz, Linsky, Grashow, 2009
The Takeaways:
Being a leader and having a position of authority are not the same. In fact, people in positions of authority may not exhibit acts of leadership at all! However, those in authority can take on the activity of leadership by taking on the roles of Protection, Direction, and Order with a different set of guidelines. That, folks, is how a person with authority can act like a true leader.
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