Leading with Obedience to Excitement Date:   Wednesday , November 04, 2009 As managers, our key responsibility is to deliver results. And we deliver direct results from our own efforts as well as ensure our teams also deliver results as expected and agreed. The old paradigm in management was that managers would use their positional power to get things done by the people. In the knowledge era we are living in, position power is nearly not as effective. People want to be more led and less managed. Have you ever come across a knowledge worker who ever complained that he or she is being undermanaged? On the contrary, most employees in many of the organizations complain that they are under-led. Leading employees with authority, rather managing with power is key to inspiring and engaging the knowledge workers. Options of Authority available to Managers: There are many different ways how managers can exercise authority even if they are not holding hierarchically high positions. Look at some of the following * Authority of Competence: In managing knowledge workers, this is the type of authority that works best. People respect managers not because who they are or where they are or for that matter who they know, but because what they know! Knowledge and expertise get all the attention and influence. * Authority of Character: Ability to influence others by virtue of one’s personal character, credibility and integrity. The fact remains that people are “boss watchers.” They look for what the bosses say and how they conduct themselves. More there is disconnect between what managers preach and practice, the less they are likely to command any influence with people they manage. * Authority of Style: Style is to do with how managers treat their people, relate to them, listen to them, and attribute credit for their contributions and the like. When employees perceive managers’ style as informal, trusting, empowering and enabling, the more they are willing to let them be influenced. * Authority of Conviction: This is the ability to influence the team by virtue of demonstrated commitment. Employees have the uncanny knack of assessing the level of commitment managers show to a task or a customer and are willing to extend their commitment only to the extent they perceive their managers are committed to. As much as cheer leadership is critical and helpful, employees need to see much more in the form of commitment * Authority of Alliance: This involves the ability to influence by virtue of shared self interest. This is often ignored by managers as they do not seem to understand the power of shared self interest as a powerful motivator to getting things done. When employees recognize that managers’ actions and expectations have employees’ interests in mind as much as manager’s own, there is that much more energy and effort going into delivering what the manager wants. * Authority of Leverage: Leverage involves the ability to get support from others for your employees. When employees know that their managers understand the interdependence of others in executing things and are willing to ensure that support from such others or such outsiders from other functions or departments are made available, then employees put in lot more commitment and effort into their work. In several cases, when managers left employees to fend for themselves to reach out and get help, employees have done what they can and pointed to external resistance when they could not do. * Authority of Persistence: Finally, employees need to sense a high degree of determination on the part of their managers to be able to themselves persist in the face of challenges and obstacles. These are not anything new. We have always seen successful people managers leverage these various sources of authority all the time. While positional power succeeds to a limited extent in producing compliance and conformance, albeit an unwilling conformance, managers need the other forms of authority listed above for getting an engaged workforce. Choice for Knowledge Workers: Knowledge workers have enormous choices to make. Just when it comes to delivering results, they have the following range of options to choose from: As can be seen, use of positional power may at best lead to malicious obedience! In the ladder of employee choices, each level from Willing Compliance all the way up to Creative Excitement calls for exercising different other forms of authority and not positional authority or power. In reality the journey from willing compliance to cheerful cooperation or heartfelt commitment is relatively easy to navigate when once the manager understands the impact of other forms of authority. And when employees experience the authority of character and conviction in good measure from their managers, they tend to take their motivation to the highest level of creative excitement. This is not easy, but not impossible. Every organization has managers who have demonstrated that they could do this with ease. The author of the article is C Mahalingam, Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services. He can be reached at mahalingam.c@symphonysv.com