Authentic Gravitas

by Rebecca Newton

  Sharing ownership of the goal, but dividing roles and responsibilities. Explore and understand one another’s strengths and expertise, then go through a detailed process of agreeing who is responsible for what. After studying multiple corporate examples of shared leadership, James O’Toole, Jay Galbraith, and Edward E. Lawler suggest that shared leadership is much more likely to be successful with clear and agreed-upon differentiation.13 Map out roles and responsibilities early, but remember that this isn’t a one-off conversation. Make collaborative efforts sustainable by regularly reevaluating your respective roles and effectiveness in delivering on those roles, being prepared to hold one another accountable.

  Carving out space and time to collaborate—and identifying a mission worthy of that effort. Too often in organizational life, we know we should be collaborating, and so try to squeeze it into our schedules when really we just want to get the pressing things on our to-do list done, or collaborate simply to the point of meeting our own immediate priorities. In order for collaboration to be purposeful and sustainable, it needs to meet all parties’ true interests, warrant their time, and help them achieve their core objectives. We need to highlight why this particular collaboration matters (not just extol “collaboration” in general), what difference it will make, and encourage the project’s participants to create the time and space it deserves. Only then can we find creative ways forward that have the potential to exceed our initial plans and expectations for what we can achieve.

  One of the most exciting parts of the collaborative journey is that while it is purpose-driven (there are clear goals and objectives in mind to achieve along the way), the end is unwritten: we never know where our collaborative efforts may take us. One door opens another possibility, and one creative venture prequels another. And in being courageous enough to risk sharing the effort and the ending, you position yourself to make a more important contribution and add greater value, thereby increasing your gravitas.14

  THE CHALLENGES OF BEING SIDE BY SIDE

  When we choose to collaborate, we can increase our gravitas by increasing the value of our contribution. But what happens when collaboration is almost forced upon us?

  In order to lead the room well, we need to acknowledge that today we rarely lead alone—we lead with others. The days of the “Great Man” theory of leadership—where one leader rules over the masses from an ivory tower—are long gone.

  Some of us quite literally lead with others—we co-lead a project, a team, or an organization with a peer. Others informally co-lead with colleagues. Although sharing leadership can be energizing and rewarding, the arrangement can easily become draining and frustrating if the relationship isn’t strong. We might have divided responsibilities, but the reality of leading alongside others is that it’s often tricky, messy, political, and hard. In the intricacies and difficulties of leading together with others, we can also risk reducing our authentic gravitas. What if their contribution derails our goals, or their behavior does not reflect our values—does this behavior misrepresent our own values given our collaboration?

  Success begins with commitment. When colleagues and I designed and facilitated the first collaborative training between the police forces of two countries with a decades-long history of conflict, we had the opportunity to see shared leadership in its most intense and most powerful form. Not merely putting the past aside, but rather prioritizing a peaceful joint future, the leaders from each of the forces ensured a successful training that rolled out across the two countries. Their joint success was not only a result of their commitment to the program and its objectives, but their visible commitment to one another, which began with a steeled choice and ended with a valued relationship that would go on to impact countless others.

  Whether we are recruited or promoted into a role to lead with others, start a new project or venture with chosen partners, or actively bring others on board to lead alongside us, collaborative leadership is both an opportunity and a challenge that most of us will face. And in order for our authentic gravitas to be increased in the process of leading with others, rather than put at risk, we need to be proactive in making collaborative leadership work in line with our values. Here are a few keys for building and maintaining authentic gravitas through the challenges and complexity of collaborative leadership.

  Be transparent from the outset about what matters to you. We often assume others have the same professional values as us. But while they may sound the same at a big-picture level (e.g., trust, respect, innovation, etc.), how these values play out at a behavioral level can be very different and trigger frustration or concern. Equally, find out what matters to your co-leaders—don’t settle for throwaway value statements, but seek to understand what their values look like in practice. Ask for examples and explore what success would look like for them, not just in terms of what is achieved, but the process of getting there. If there’s tension in the collaborative efforts, check in to see if your co-leaders feel their values are being accurately represented . . . and share if you feel yours aren’t. With transparency and respect, most differences can be resolved; but if there is both clarity and conflict at a values level, it may be time to consider ending or changing the collaboration. In collaborating, we still have to own the gap between intention and impact, even if that impact is coming from our co-leaders.

  Remember that there are more people affected by shared leadership than just those who are leading. As leaders, we tend to focus on how we navigate this relationship for ourselves, but it can be equally tricky for others to navigate us. With your co-leaders, be mindful of your joint impact on others. Clients, our managers, and especially our combined team can find shared leadership arrangements challenging and confusing, especially at first. Be clear about communicating your roles and responsibilities to others, and seek regular feedback on how they experience you not just as individuals, but also as a collective leadership group.

  Be first to reallocate praise for successes and to take responsibility for failures. Check in on who is being given credit for what. Acknowledging our own part in a problem, even if it’s taking a small portion of the blame, alleviates tension during conflict and leads to faster reconciliation. The flip side is true of facilitating collaborative success. Acknowledging others’ contributions, be they big or small, in the success of our ventures, energizes them in our collaborative efforts. Nothing undermines collaborative leadership like one leader taking all the credit—whether actively or by passively allowing others to attribute success to them. Because our brains interpret perceived unfairness as a threat, tensions between co-leaders could be coming from a sense (even a subconscious one) that they are not receiving due credit for their contributions. Whether others correctly or incorrectly assign success to you personally, offer praise to your co-leaders for any success. And when failures happen, own and address them together, regardless of your direct input into the situation.

  Be open to renegotiating your roles based on changing circumstances and ambitions. Over time, our skills grow and we want to expand our capability. A task that may once have been unappealing to your co-leaders may eventually become a stretch goal they would like to embrace. Whether it’s directing part of the business function, taking the lead on large client projects, fronting presentations and pitches, or owning one-to-one development meetings for the team, there are endless ways both you and your co-leader may want to change the dynamic of your relationship. Be open to these changes, and share your own evolving goals.

  Recognize that of all people, it’s likely that you personally have the greatest impact on your co-leader’s experience of work, and that they have the same impact on yours. Honest conversations exploring the reality of this impact—what’s great, what’s challenging, and what feels limiting or restrictive—may be emotional and very likely uncomfortable, but will be worth it.

  These points may seem obvious, but in the daily busyness, and
sometimes messiness, of collaboration, it can be difficult to prioritize these practices. Investing time and energy into the collaborative relationship beyond just the scope of your role will almost certainly make it a better one. It will also mean that for both the organization and the co-leaders personally, two heads—or more—really can be better than one.15

  CLOSE ENOUGH TO FIGHT

  I often get calls from executives about facilitating management team days, and when asked what their number one goal is, some offer the intriguing response, “to be able to argue more.” They’ll describe their team positively, but know there’s a deeper level of connection missing. “We’re nice, we have fun together, we like each other and trust each other on some level, but it needs to be deeper. We need to be able to disagree with one another more openly.” To be people who foster collaboration, we need to create a team culture where people choose to challenge one another—on their thinking, their behavior, and their decisions. We need to be more than just “nice.” It’s easier to choose to sweep a lot of things under the rug. It’s easier to go to someone else and complain about a person rather than confront them. And it’s easy to oscillate between two extremes of not bringing up anything challenging most of the time and then having the odd explosion. We might feel comfortable yelling at a driver who has just cut us off, or complaining to a random service provider about a terrible experience, but most of us find it hard to choose confrontation when it comes to people we have continuing, close working relationships with. But conflict isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it should be expected given that for most of us, there is no “right answer” in business. Conflict in business can be constructive or destructive—what matters is how we handle differing positions and points of view. Disagreements about the way forward in particular can be healthy, productive, and lead to better outcomes. Fostering an environment of being “close enough to fight” with peers is one of the trickiest challenges we face in developing a healthy collaborative culture. The peer relationship can be simultaneously the most comfortable and the most threatening. Time after time, I’ve encountered successful professionals whose core barrier to authentic gravitas seems to be building genuine trust and practical collaboration with peers. Why is it that we can feel less sure of ourselves with peers? And what can we do about it?

  Peers tend to be the people in the organization with the same level of specialist knowledge that we have. Often they come from a similar background and have the same amount of experience. They know what we know. So when a peer has a more assertive or aggressive style than you do, or simply comes to different conclusions from the same set of facts, it can feel like a personal attack on your way of doing things. Our internal monologue oscillates between negative self-talk (Why didn’t I think of that?) and defensiveness (That’ll never work anyway!). This common monologue hinders our gravitas. Moreover, there’s a natural competitiveness between people at the same level in the organization—you’re often competing for the same resources and promotions. Letting this turn into a negative cycle can be destructive, eroding your own confidence, undercutting your attempts to come across as calm and competent, and limiting the value you’re able to add.

  People with authentic gravitas have learned the skills and committed to the disciplines and strategies for making relationships work well in order to truly be “close enough to fight.” These commitments include:

  1. Recognizing your own uncertainty about others’ intentions. We focus on the gap between our own intent and impact, and feel bad when we have an unintended negative impact on others. Through the pure acknowledgment of this difference, whether stated to others or just a self-whisper (e.g., “I didn’t mean to come across like that”), we are shifting the focus from our impact to our intention. With others, it’s easy just to focus on their impact, as that’s all we can see or experience. Let’s be gracious enough to others to assume they also have a gap between their intention and impact on us, and not just examine their impact but also explore their intention.

  2. Choosing courageous conversations rather than silent competition. To have an honest conversation about your dynamic and relationship with that one person who particularly intimidates you takes a huge amount of vulnerability, personal risk, and interpersonal skill. The easy option is to continue without having the difficult conversation. The courageous conversation is more likely to lead to collaboration and better outcomes. When you’re less intimidated, you don’t just feel stronger—you’re able to give more in terms of both quantity and quality.

  3. Realizing that in business, for most of us, there is no right answer. This little mantra has helped some of my most intimidated clients to share their views with strong-minded peers. When I ask them to recall the last time they offered an opinion that was ridiculed (openly or silently), they can’t give one example. Speaking up is almost always worth the risk.

  4. Recognizing there actually is no pie. Working with peers is not a winner-takes-all game; more wins for you does not mean fewer for me. Not adopting an idea doesn’t mean the idea wasn’t valuable, particularly if it was a springboard for others’ contributions. Conversely, getting your proposal accepted doesn’t necessarily mean that you gain an edge over your peers.

  The goal is not to reduce the frequency with which we disagree with our peers or vice versa. It’s to change how we feel about these conversations. Whether it’s with peers, our boss, people who report to us or are more junior, customers, clients, or other stakeholders—these steps can help us to foster deeper relationships in even the most challenging contexts. Ironically, it’s by stepping further into the uncomfortable—by having courageous conversations, carving out seemingly impossible time to think, being more willing to say and hear a variety of opinions, and being “close enough to fight”—that we are able to fuel real collaboration. Even when we have difficult messages to deliver or when we outright disagree, we can have positive connection and add significant value.16

  A FOUNDATION OF TRUST

  Perhaps the most important requirement for creative collaboration is one that sits at the very heart of authentic gravitas: trust. It’s not enough to be open to, and proactive about, inviting others to collaborate. We need to create conditions for them to want collaboration, because rarely is it easy—it often requires more time and has great risks attached not just for us but for others. The key is building trust. Researcher Gloria Barczak and colleagues at Northeastern University explored antecedents of creativity within teams.17 They looked at two parts of team trust: affective trust (the confidence an individual places in a team member based on empathy or concern shown by that team member) and cognitive trust (the confidence a person places in another based on that team member’s competence and reliability). They found that team trust helps to create a culture of collaboration, which in turn enhances team creativity. Cognitive trust also moderates the relationship between collaborative culture and team creativity. We need to foster trust—a willingness of others to be vulnerable with us.

  What is likely to influence another’s decision to take a chance and trust us? Trust researchers from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University highlighted various factors that will shape a person’s choice: their own propensity to trust; their emotions; and their perceptions of our trustworthiness (based on such factors as assessments of our interests and advantages, social roles and groups, relationship history, social norms, and third-party reports). They argue that people naturally assess others’ trustworthiness before they engage in trusting actions.18 For mutual trust, one person has to take the first step. The researchers noted that this subjects that person to risk—of intentional or unintentional exploitation, embarrassment, or other negative outcomes. If we are serious about building authentic gravitas, which is grounded in trust, we are called on to take the first step.

  Interestingly, collaboration and trust appear to exist in a positive cycle. Where we actively collaborate, we foster greater trust. A Canadian resea
rch team found that not only did fostering collaboration help build trust and manage conflict, but that without collaboration, trust had no bearing on performance.19 This again highlights the promise and power of collaboration in practice. It may be that collaboration is the greatest opportunity we have for adding positive, significant value.

  PRACTICES FOR BEING A JOINT ADVENTURER

  The reality is, the people who stand out for the positive, significant value they add are those who are prepared to stand alongside others. Collaboration requires us to be humble (recognizing that two or more heads can add more value than one), courageous (it’s normal to feel risk—by inviting others in, we’re bringing in an element of the unknown), and vulnerable (others will see more of our flaws, as well as our strengths, and we have to be okay with that). If you’re not feeling prepared to be vulnerable with the people you’re collaborating with, it’s likely they’re not willing to be vulnerable with you, either. But a willingness to be vulnerable is a core component of trust, and without trust, we can’t genuinely collaborate. Here’s a summary of some useful behaviors and habits to practically build collaboration:

  Move beyond positions to understand interests (what is most important to your collaborators when it comes to the area you’re discussing). Be transparent from the outset about what matters to you. If you miss this step in the collaboration process, if you don’t feel understood or things have changed, be prepared to open up and have these conversations. It might feel awkward, but true collaboration requires transparency when it comes to our interests. Be open to renegotiating your roles based on changing circumstances and ambitions as a result of that conversation. You might want to change your goals as your collaborative project evolves; check in to see if your colleagues would like to change theirs, too.