The key point: adapt your thinking to shift between the linear and the complex, between peepholes A and B. Applying a linear solution to a complex problem doesn’t work, just as trying to solve a linear problem with a complex solution is a waste of time, effort, and investment. Train your brain to be nimble.
Wider and clearer perception is a way to further guide your thinking and use it to better lead others. Consciously figure neuroplasticity into your mind-set. Learn to expand and tighten your focus, just as an accomplished photographer uses different lenses and settings to accomplish different shots. This will allow you to integrate problems and perspectives. It encourages solutions molded to the matter at hand.
Richard Besser did that when he forged a path for a country and a world intimidated by an invisible and deadly virus. He helped others to understand what lay ahead, and he inspired people to follow, even up to the president of the United States. As he directed his staff in the multifaceted work of investigating and responding to the pandemic, he also gave simple instructions to the public: cough into your bent elbow to minimize the spread of the virus. This both assured people that they had a role in the response and gave them a sense of control to counter their uncertainty. Every media outlet that wanted an interview got the chance to speak with a CDC spokesperson. Dr. Besser wanted the public informed. He wanted the government to be responsive. Dr. Besser leveraged influence well beyond his authority.
By contrast, Douglas Ivester missed the complexity of the problem he faced. His understanding was narrow. It cost him his job—and cost his company market share and revenue.
You have many opportunities to open your own mind and those of others. Use the Cone-in-the-Cube to expand everyone’s outlook, including your own. Look into the mirror to challenge your cognitive biases. Find the bigger picture.
It’s your moment to think like a meta-leader.
Questions for Journaling
Think of a Cone-in-the-Cube situation you recently faced. They are common. How was it resolved? What were the frustrations? How might it have been resolved differently?
Consider a time when you narrowly perceived a complex problem. What constrained your perspective? What were your cognitive biases? What were the cognitive biases of others? What were the implications? Were you able to open up your thinking? What or who helped you?
Reflect on a time when you saw someone else impose a linear solution on a complex problem.
FIVE
GENERATING LEVERAGE
Influence Beyond Your Authority
April 2006, Leeds, United Kingdom. Harriet Green is named CEO of Premier Farnell, a global, UK-based electronic components distribution company. While the business has roots stretching back to the dawn of World War II, its future looks troubled. It’s in dire need of a strategic transformation.
The business is both simple and deceptively complex: an engineer, perhaps designing a new smartphone prototype, orders from Premier Farnell’s extensive catalog of parts. The company sources the parts from suppliers around the world and delivers them as quickly as possible. Now though, having lagged in moving its business online, the company is being outmaneuvered by competitors who can deliver more quickly and inexpensively. Its market share and margins are under pressure.
Green’s challenge is not simply to drive efficiency and growth. She must also lead the company to a fundamentally different way of thinking about its business: from selling products to being at the center of and facilitating information flows from its suppliers to its end customers. “When I arrived, the business needed to understand who its customers are and then meet their needs, both now and into the future.” In her view, Premier Farnell would succeed only if its stakeholders succeed.
Green steps into the corner office with significant authority, knowing that she has the full backing of the board and that everyone in the organization understands that significant change is imminent. She has a reputation as a high achiever who demands results. As CEO, she can set forth her vision, hire and fire whomever she pleases, and direct company policy. However, her actions on that first day do not invoke that authority. Instead, she sends a companywide email asking for help. She says that she knows the company must change to grow and acknowledges that she needs the ideas, energy, and support of the entire organization to make it happen.
“I was careful not to appear to be some know-it-all newcomer from a competitor,” she later told us. “Yes, I had ideas about what we needed to do, but there are always limits to what one person can do or make others do. I needed the people in the organization to see themselves as part of the solution. They knew this particular business better than I did—its strengths and weaknesses—and I needed their knowledge and insights. Yes, I knew that there would be people who would be gone in a few months, but I also knew that there would be people who would rise and become significant contributors to our new strategy.”
With that simple email, Harriet Green laid the foundation for influence that would extend far beyond her formal authority. Over the next few years, Premier Farnell did transform itself, moving significant parts of its business onto the internet, expanding into new regions around the globe, and growing profitably despite generally unfavorable economic conditions. Employee engagement scores rose. People enthusiastically followed Green because they wanted to, not merely because she commanded them.
Authority Plus Influence Drive Your Meta-Leadership
You may think “you’re it” means that you are in charge. Within some limited parameters, you may be. On the whole, however, there are constraints on what you can order your subordinates or others to do. There are bounds on the discretion you can exercise. And there are organizational and legal checks and balances on the actions you can take.
As a meta-leader, you constantly navigate the tension between authority and influence with the people who follow you. Authority is the right to enforce actions from others, to command, or to make decisions. Influence, by contrast, persuades and secures commitment from other people. Combined, your authority and influence drives action and builds momentum. What you get from others is their engagement: the combination of their own authority and influence.
Authority is given to you by others. Influence is built by you with others. While both can drive accountability, authority is more distant and rational, while influence is closer and more emotional. Harriet Green was given authority by the board of directors who hired her. She could have made changes unilaterally. Instead, she first reached out to employees to involve them in the change, leveraging influence before asserting her authority.
Your hierarchical authority represents what you are officially sanctioned to do in your position as you make decisions and exercise power. It also delineates the limits on what you can do. Your authority is codified in your rank and title. If you work in government or the military, your authority is legally specified and certified. If you work in the private sector, your authority is incorporated into the governance documents of your organization.
Your authority enables you to hire and fire people; approve expenditures; set strategy; enforce laws, policies, and regulations; and even, at the extreme, operate against the will of others. Given the position you hold, you may be invited to speak at prestigious conferences or serve on blue-ribbon panels, engagements that may be less about you as an individual and more about your title, its assumed prerogatives, and the stature of the organization you represent. (Once you lose the title, your stature will probably diminish and the invitations end.)
You have clear authority over your subordinates as you lead down. It is stipulated in your job description and theirs. You exercise this authority to ensure that your unit is productive and achieves its mission. Errors can arise in using this authority either too much or too little. You don’t always want to be the “nice guy” who shies away from using authority, nor do you want to be the overlord who exercises formal authority as the only way to get things done. Your challenge is finding just the right balance.
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p; Meta-leaders rarely rely on authority alone, even in circumstances where they have it. The optimal blend of authority and influence depends on the context in which you are leading.
This is particularly relevant as you lead across to peers and beyond to suppliers, regulators, community organizations, and others outside of your organization. You certainly derive authority from your position, credentials, interorganizational agreements and contracts, and the reputation of your company. And yet you have no direct hierarchical authority over these others. For example, a physician may not sit high on a hospital’s organizational chart, though can still have significant influence on clinical affairs. No matter the extent or source of your authority, to succeed your efforts are interdependent with the efforts and resources of others. That’s when you rely on influence. Whatever authority you have, combined with the influence you generate, equals your capacity to drive dedication and accomplishment.
For instance, you may have the authority to sign an agreement to acquire a key competitor, taking your firm in a new direction. You have a solid financial case to move ahead. However, you don’t have the authority to order investors and customers to support the move or to have regulators ignore their antitrust concerns. This is when your meta-leadership matters most. Even within your own hierarchy, you may order employees to integrate with the acquired firm, though, unless you win their heads and hearts, they can resist and undermine your best intentions.
We were involved as conflict resolution facilitators in the merger of two large health care institutions. The boards signed an agreement, which was within their respective authorities, though they did so without fully consulting their clinical departments. The boards could not force those clinical units to cooperate and work well together. In fact, clinicians from the different organizations became competitive and hostile with one another. Where there had been two department chiefs in the separate hospitals, with the merger there now would be just one. The chief who got the job asserted his priorities and preferences across the newly integrated departments. Everything from departmental procedures and medical equipment vendors to organizational culture were being imposed upon those who had worked for the other organization. Pushback and resentment ensued. It took significant time and effort to help them find common ground and learn to work together—intangible qualities not included in a formal legal document. (You will learn more about the methods used to negotiate such disputes in Chapter 11.)
As a meta-leader, you aspire to achieve results because people are motivated, not simply required, to do so. Toward that objective, you first listen. Demonstrate that you are interested in finding ways to make the new arrangements succeed. If you want flexibility from others, you must be a role model for that same flexibility and curiosity yourself. In doing so, you exercise influence to reason, persuade, and inspire key stakeholders. What you hope to accomplish together is in their interest as well as yours. If you are leading an organizational merger, seek mutual success: their success in making the merger work can likewise be your success. In the merger of the two health care organizations, the leaders on both sides could have explored each other’s priorities in order to embed them into a combined operation. That is a “best of both sides” attitude. This was not the case, and the merger was therefore rife with conflict. Authority is vital, yet it is not a fail-safe.
Unlike a simple machine in which every part is specialized and uniformly fitted, organizations and relationships are complex and dynamic. Humans are emotional, fickle, and self-interested, all in somewhat distinctive ways. Much occurs outside formal chains of command and organizational hierarchies. Any policy manual that attempts to formalize every interaction would be so thick and complicated as to be useless.
Motivating Followers
Recall our operative definition of leadership: “people follow you.” They follow you because they believe that you can lead them to a shared goal, be it a sales objective or a humanitarian mission. The example you set is a significant source of your influence. Having influence means people are ready to follow you, willingly and wholeheartedly. You are a role model for everything you want others to do.
Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University is one of the world’s foremost experts on building influence. He and his team found six foundational principles that are valid across cultures, albeit in different measures: reciprocity, if I do a favor for you, you are more likely to do one for me—influence derives from benefits that are shared and exchanged; commitment and consistency, when people commit to something or someone, they tend to remain consistent with that choice—hence the need to make a good first impression; social proof, people are influenced by those they perceive to be “like them” and who are respected by others whom they respect: liking, people are influenced more by those they enjoy and admire; authority derives from your formal position and power, along with what you do with it (and clearly, authority and influence are not mutually exclusive); finally, scarcity, your control of resources, skills, or information that others want.
If this all seems like basic good behavior, it is. Leadership expert Warren Bennis advised, “If you want to be a better leader, be a better person.” This can be challenging amid bureaucratic politics, pressures to deliver financial results, and sometimes unclear direction from above. Nevertheless, stick with your principles and values. Your authenticity is at the heart of your influence.
The bounty of influence you accrue and sustain depends on you. You seek it, cultivate it, earn it, and deploy it wisely. When you leave a position, your successor inherits your authority. Your influence—and your way of building it—are yours to take with you. If authority is the power officially given to you, influence is the unofficial power you amass through diligent effort, even with those who hold authority over you. Though there are limits to authority, there is no limit to how much influence you can accumulate.
In physics, physical leverage is created when a rod is used with a fulcrum to amplify energy. That leverage creates the force to lift a massive rock. To wield social leverage, meta-leaders combine authority and influence to achieve their objectives.
Some problems demand command-and-control authority for speed and decisiveness. In an emergency, for example, there is often no time for debate or indecision. By contrast, building the strategic direction of your organization is best achieved through participative processes. Some members of your team may need authoritative direction while others thrive with independence.
You have authority over yourself and your subordinates. You have some limited positional authority leading up, across, and beyond. Influence can be exerted in many directions, often simultaneously. As a meta-leader, you uncover the contours of a situation. Ask yourself: What is the relevant authority you hold? What is the support you can influence? And what are the key points at which leverage can be created and exercised? Map out the people, circumstances, and objectives as you balance authority and influence to deliver the best possible outcome.
Influence and authority: two very different ways to persuade people to follow you. They vary in the behavior and attitudes of the leader as well as in the experiences and the motives of those who follow. The primary distinction is whether followers are with you because they want to be or because they perceive that they have no choice. This is an important question for you: why do people follow you? Different people may do so for very different reasons. The answers inform how you engage them.
This raises another question. If influence is so effective, why don’t more leaders exercise it? From our observation of leaders in both high-stress and routine situations, we find that the angrier or less self-confident they are, the more often they tend toward authoritarian tactics over influence strategies. These individuals demonstrate interpersonal antagonism, anxiety, fear, self-doubt, or apprehension as they engage in what is often “my way or the highway” directive behavior. This style can reap short-term success, however, its effects are limited. Consistent authoritarian leadership does not foster the motivatio
n or productivity of followers. It provokes antipathy toward the leader.
The deepest and most genuine followership arises when people choose freely to be with you, whether or not you have authority over them. As leaders share and model their humanity, passion for a common purpose, credibility, confidence of character and loyalty with their followers, they most often inspire the same in return. The result is an authentic enthusiasm that far exceeds mere compliance.
You motivate people and effect change well beyond your formal authority.
Harriet Green used her authority to set high standards and establish rigorous performance measurements at Premier Farnell. She used her influence to gain acceptance for the new strategic direction by inviting input from people throughout the organization. By offering people opportunities to shape and contribute to those moves, Green helped them understand the reasoning behind the changes. She then ensured that the organization supported people with training and other incentives that made them aspire to higher performance. It didn’t all go exactly as planned, though working through influence, she helped her people gain the confidence to overcome the obstacles they encountered. And there were consequences for those who would not or could not accept the new direction: they were, as a matter of last resort, moved out of the organization. Judicious use of authority is a path toward greater influence.
Trust is essential to influence. Green created what she called the “trust agenda,” the goal of which was for Premier Farnell to be seen as fully trustworthy by each of its stakeholders. The firm created the “Element 14” online community for one of its key customer segments, electronics design engineers. In Element 14, designers can speak freely with each other—even criticizing Premier Farnell if they choose. These engineers often work alone or in small groups, and they appreciated the chance to connect and collaborate with peers from around the world. By providing a useful, secure, and uncensored community, Premier Farnell became a trusted part of that community rather than just another supplier of parts. They built influence with a constituency upon whom their success depended and over whom they had no authority.
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