Authentic Gravitas
Page 23
If you’ve left the house and there are other people where you work who at least know your face, it’s very likely someone will ask, “How are you?” or “How are things going?”—those sweeping questions that give you the reins to respond with whatever you like regarding your health, personal life, work in general, current emotions, or what you’re working on now. Of course, it’s only about being prepared for encounters with people you are looking to influence (you don’t need to be ready to chat with your friend Pete, who sits next to you and engages in nonstop banter with you!). But do take advantage of that inevitable generic question by being ready with one or two key messages (just a couple of sentences) for those potentially important, unplanned encounters. Not only can you positively shape key individuals’ perceptions of you, you may create champions for forward influence that stretches far beyond the coffee machine.
INFLUENCE FROM A DISTANCE
But how do I have influence when it comes to virtual working? How can I apply the water cooler/coffee machine principles when I’m not actually in the office or regularly in the same space as the people I most want to influence? Virtual working is a growing part of most of our professional lives—we looked at some of the challenges and opportunities around virtual authentic gravitas in chapter 4. When it comes specifically to influence, research has shown that influencing techniques applied face-to-face are also successfully applied in virtual contexts.18 One factor that plays an important role in virtual influence is ambiguity reduction. Researchers note that this requires empathy and perspective-taking, reinforcing our need to not only acquire knowledge and understanding of the people we’re working with, but also to consider and be clear about potential areas of miscommunication.
As we wrap up this chapter, let’s come back to Aria, our finance professional within the global branding and marketing agency, struggling with gravitas among her peer group. I was pleased that within a few short months, Aria became much happier and more confident at work. However, she didn’t suddenly walk into their finance group meetings one day with more confidence. Aria’s confidence built up gradually from the increased positive peer responses she received to her ideas and proposals for the wider financial strategies at the agency. These improved responses came after her assessment of key peers (remembering that assessment here is about giving greater consideration to others, their personal preferences for interacting, their goals, their resources, their challenges, etc.). This led to not only more, but also better, preparation for her encounters with them and being intentional in choosing which influencing techniques to apply. Aria was most comfortable using rational persuasion, but it was simply not working on its own with her peers. She chose to be courageous and try out different techniques that she was initially unsure of and which, at times, didn’t work. But Aria bravely persisted and found various combinations of different techniques that worked for different people. It was certainly more work and required more energy, but it led to greater influence and authentic gravitas within her peer group. Working with Aria, I once again saw firsthand how confidence can be a by-product of being intentional and choosing courage.
We tend to rely on habit when trying to influence our management team, direct reports, peers, stakeholders, and clients. These habits may include styles that come more naturally to us, or that we’ve seen successfully modeled by people we respect. But there is a wide range of techniques available to us. Our greatest barriers to successfully influencing others can be not taking the time to think about how we currently influence, and how we want to influence. It requires thinking about how we work, not just what we have to do for work. If we are being intentional, we then need to be courageous enough to try out new styles and disciplined in seeking feedback and continuing to adapt. In doing so, we reduce the gap between intentions, action, and impact. Being prepared to use the full toolkit and being intentional about which tools to pull out at which time, with which people, fuels professional chemistry and equips you for greater authentic gravitas.
PRACTICES FOR CREATING PROFESSIONAL CHEMISTRY
We influence on a daily basis, yet it’s easy to slip into unintentional habits and inherited behaviors that we’ve seen modeled, without considering if they’re the best approach for the situation we’re in, and in line with our goals for impact. If you’re in a situation where you want to increase your positive influence, here is a reminder of two key points for creating that professional chemistry:
Remember, there is a wide range of influencing techniques available to you. Most of us are not using our full toolkit. Try to identify at least one person whom you see using each of the influencing approaches effectively in your working environment: rational persuasion, legitimating, favors and exchange, inspirational appeals (emotions and values), ingratiation, and consulting. Reflect on what it is they do well and if there are any behaviors (sometimes this can be as small as a phrase or way of questioning) that you could try to adopt in your own way.
Be ready to balance inquiry and advocacy, not just in the meeting room, but also in passing. Make time for small encounters around the office—sometimes just a couple of powerful open or focused questions can lead you to a much better understanding of another person or a particular situation. Also, be ready to share in these encounters. We think of them as unexpected, given that we don’t know when and with whom they’re going to happen, but these encounters aren’t really a surprise. On any one day, assuming we’ve left the house and are headed to work, it’s likely we’ll meet at least a few people. Be ready with a couple of sentences that highlight what you’re working on right now and why it matters. It’s certainly not the goal to deliver a rehearsed speech at the coffee machine! But it is about being able to articulate what you’re doing and why it matters succinctly—because one thing we do know is that people will ask. What we make of those brief encounters is up to us.
NINE
THE JOINT ADVENTURER
Creative Collaboration over Silent Competition
In chapter 1, we saw that rather than focusing on how to stand out from the crowd, authentic gravitas comes when we’re able to focus on the people in the crowd. Instead of trying to be the superhero who stands apart and saves the day, people with authentic gravitas move toward others. While they often have the spotlight, they don’t need it or focus on attaining it—rather, they focus on adding genuine value. As such, they are better able and more likely to promote collaborative effort. Driving collaboration means we are able to add greater value by drawing on collective energy, input, and creativity. In this chapter, we’ll look at some of the reasons why collaborative efforts can fail or undermine authentic gravitas, and examine strategies for collaborating well.
WHY TWO (OR MORE) HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE
Here’s the seeming irony: gravitas can be shared. We might find ourselves asking, “What is it about them—that person who stands out?” Here, gravitas seems like a unique, individual quality. But those professionals with authentic gravitas are not afraid of sharing the spotlight. Sitting behind their spotlight, what makes them stand out is an ease that emanates from knowing that they don’t need to keep the spotlight to themselves. They are focused on how they can make a positive, substantive contribution, and they are aware that they are better equipped to do that with others than to do it alone.
We collaborate when we intentionally choose humility—a belief that two, or more, heads really are better than one.1 By humility, I do not mean putting yourself down or undervaluing your own skills, strengths, and potential contribution, but adopting a mind-set that I alone cannot do what I have the potential to do with others who add different expertise, skills, and strengths. It is a belief that I can add more value when I’m collaborating with others. Humility not only enables you to collaborate with others, but it also creates the conditions for others around you to collaborate. While humility is often regarded as a fairly stable trait, it is something that can change, through experience or traini
ng.2 How can we train ourselves to be humble? Researchers highlight three factors that are essential for humility in a workplace context: willingness to obtain accurate self-knowledge, a tendency to keep an open mind and continuously learn and improve, and appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions. In a study of CEOs, their top management teams (TMT), and outcomes at 105 US firms, researchers found that when a humble CEO runs a firm, its TMT is more likely to collaborate and share information.3 They noted that this enables the CEOs to make the most of the firm’s talent. In another study of sixty-three private companies in China, including 328 TMT members and 645 middle managers, findings revealed that CEO humility was positively associated with empowering leadership behaviors, which, in turn, was related to the level of TMT integration.4 When people demonstrate humility and intentionally choose not to stand alone, their impact goes far above and beyond their direct interactions.
It also requires courage to invite collaboration—much more than it does to act alone or delegate. Because true collaboration is intimate and uncertain. It’s now not just about me and how I show up, which I can control to some degree. It’s about you and me. It’s the and that is risky. I know me. I’m not perfect, but I’m known (of course I have blind spots, but I feel I know me more than I know you). I have a sense of what I’m capable of doing and delivering in this situation or with these clients or for my boss. I invite collaboration because I know that another person has the potential to add something different—something I don’t know. Perhaps my expertise does not stretch to their area of expertise. Perhaps their strengths are not like my strengths. So even if I know that person, I don’t know what they know and I can’t add what they can. And there’s the risk: the unknown. It takes courage to invite and drive collaboration with others—to trust them to co-deliver in situations and projects and meetings where others trust us. It is a counterintuitive idea, but in order to stand out, I need to stand alongside.
WIN-WIN OR DIE: THERE IS NO PIE
In all situations, we can unconsciously adopt either an exclusive or a collaborative approach. With the exclusive approach, we protect our projects and relationships and keep others at a distance. We protect our piece of the pie. We might do it with good intent, and we may be working alongside others in a team, but we don’t truly drive collaboration. When we use the collaborative approach, we proactively bring in others to achieve our goals. This goes beyond—and is often confused with—compromise. At work, we often label our efforts as “collaborative,” but really all we achieve, or had aimed for in the first place, is compromise. When it comes to our competing priorities and objectives, we win a bit and lose a bit. In collaboration, on the other hand, both parties win and tie success to their ability to collaborate, even when they started with conflicting ideas. You courageously create codependency for success. It’s “win-win or die”—there is no pie to divide.
To offer collaboration is also a commitment to increased proximity and to building “relational capital”: I know that to truly collaborate, we must work well together, and I am prepared to be proactive in building our relationship, even though at times this is likely to be difficult. It is a commitment to being more vulnerable with you and, perhaps even more poignantly, opening up the people who trust me to be vulnerable with you. In the creative process of working together, I will need to be transparent with my thinking and open with my motivations, and you will see not only my strengths at work, but more of my flaws as well. Collaboration never works without vulnerability. And if I have invited you in—whether you are my colleague or an expert from outside my immediate sphere—I am opening myself up to risk. But I am also opening up the potential for great gain. I may add value by myself, but we have the potential to be invaluable together. This is evidenced in the current shift in leadership thinking from individual to shared/collaborative leadership.
There is clear, strong research evidence for the benefits of increasing collaboration at work. Heidi K. Gardner from Harvard Law School has conducted extensive research showing that collaboration is a powerful driver of both financial and people-related benefits for firms.5 Organizations globally are eagerly seeking help in building collaborative leaders and professionals. An openness to genuine collaboration and the skills to execute it are highly valued. Given that professionals with authentic gravitas lead the room, we’ll look here at the requirements and enablers of collaborative leadership.
COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP
In organizational psychology, we no longer consider only the distinctions of “the leader” and “the followers,” but also a collective, inclusive model where leadership is shared. And everywhere I turn, I hear leaders talking about their need for collaborative leadership. It’s being identified as a fundamental differentiator in achieving strategic objectives. It’s recognized as being a key foundation of how leaders can add substantive value. I think of real collaborative leadership as facilitating constructive interpersonal connections and activities between people and between heterogeneous groups to achieve shared goals. It is proactive and purpose-driven.
There is increasing evidence making the case for collaborative or shared leadership that showcases how this approach to work enables us to add greater value. Research into new venture performance found that shared leadership was positively related to new venture performance. Measuring performance by the growth rate of the firm, researchers found performance was positively related to leadership being shared in the top management team, regardless of their particular style of leadership.6 Other research suggests shared or collaborative leadership is positively related to:
Greater team interaction7
Broader collaboration and coordination8
Novel and more innovative solutions9
Team effectiveness and performance10, 11
In order to make a difference, though, collaborative leadership has to go beyond the polite, thoughtful behaviors of involving others, sharing information, and lending strength when it’s needed.
Dubai Airports offer a case study. When I interviewed the leaders there, they were being incredibly proactive in their collaborative leadership efforts, with a very clear purpose. While already running the world’s busiest airport for international travel (passenger traffic grew to over 88 million in 2017), they recognized that to achieve their vision of becoming the world’s leading airport company, they needed to drive a new service culture through the 3,400-person organization.12 But they knew they couldn’t make a meaningful change in their culture alone. To change customers’ real experience of Dubai Airports, they needed to engage their vendors and partners as well.
One of the outcomes was a customer service training program that was rolled out over a three-year period across many stakeholder organizations and 43,000 employees. The Dubai Airports team was investing in training for more than 39,000 people outside of their own organization, aiming to ensure behavioral consistency and therefore customer experience consistency at every possible touch point. Samya Ketait, Dubai Airports’ VP for learning and development, said, “This is a huge project, but a worthwhile one. It means that regardless of who you meet at Dubai Airports—a police officer, a cleaner, an immigration officer—you should have the same positive customer experience. Collaborating with our stakeholder leaders has made this possible.”
While it’s spoken of highly in organizational life, collaborative leadership is not something that necessarily comes easily. It may seem like a lovely, generous gesture of Dubai Airports to offer customer service training for so many other organizations’ employees, but the leaders of those outside organizations had to weigh the costs of their employees’ time out of work to participate, and to trust Dubai Airports with training their teams in a way that would match their own organizations’ values and objectives. To sustain the three-year collaborative process and achieve its goals, these leaders recognized the behaviors that would make it work.
When it comes to co
llaboration, these factors can drive success:
Focusing on interests rather than positions. As with negotiations and conflict resolution, one of the most important keys to successful collaboration is focusing on interests rather than positions. When we are “collaborating,” we are typically not from the same team—otherwise, we would most likely frame it as “teamwork.” What makes teamwork different from collaboration is the goal. In collaboration, the goals may be different—we may have different positions, yet common ground can almost always be found at the level of interests. In collaborating with others, ask, “What’s most important to you here? What really matters?” Encourage their openness and foster trust by sharing personally what your main drivers are.
Being an agent and a target of influence. In the last chapter, we looked in great detail at how to increase influence (i.e., to be a more successful agent of influence). This is important, as influence (e.g., influencing people toward common goals) is at the core of what constitutes leadership, and people with authentic gravitas, regardless of their position, lead the room. Of equal importance when it comes to collaboration is being prepared to be a target of others’ influence, as discussed in chapter 5. This requires openness to alternative ideas, inquisitiveness to understand the foundation of others’ arguments before pushing back and asserting one’s own ideas, and recognition of the other party’s value and what they add to the collaborative venture.