You're It

by Leonard J Marcus

  Green is currently head of Asia Pacific for IBM, where she is involved in an even faster-moving business involving artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Reflecting on her more recent meta-leadership, Green said, “I am a believer in lifelong learning, and never has it mattered more. Leaders who don’t understand the power and potential of the exponential technology shifts we are seeing are missing opportunities and putting their businesses at risk. They become irrelevant. You gain influence when you’re authentically involved and on top of the latest digital knowledge.”

  She added that, with four generations active in the workforce, leaders must learn from their teams even as they lead them. “The more experience I have, the more I believe in humility: recognizing what you don’t know, and the importance of surrounding yourself with people who know more and are better than you.” Reflecting on being influenced, she emphasized being open to feedback and, where appropriate, acting on it personally. “Our younger colleagues have so much to teach us about social priorities, speaking up, work-life balance, and finding purpose in all we do.”

  The Why of Your Meta-Leadership

  When discussing Premier Farnell’s sustainability initiatives with us, Green said, “People need more than a mission. They need a purpose.” Purpose goes beyond slogans, revenue goals, and incentive programs. It is not simply selling a product or service. It is improving people’s lives in some tangible way. Purpose articulates the higher why of your endeavor. Why are you pursuing this objective? Why are you and your followers together? Why, and how, is each of them essential to success? A compelling purpose captures the positive and significant ways in which all of you, individually and collectively, contribute to the larger system.

  Along with a resonant purpose, you need to build the credibility to accomplish it. Who are you, and what do you stand for? What is to be done, and have you marshaled the resources, mandate, and expertise to accomplish the goal? When combined, purpose and the credibility to achieve it are powerful motivators.

  When your followers believe in the why of the mission, they invest more of their energy and enthusiasm. Just as important, their commitment strengthens when they trust that you value them and their contributions. Aligning with and contributing to your efforts offers them a way to find personal purpose and meaning. They discover that your values conform to theirs. They are impressed by the wisdom of your analysis and understanding. They notice that you encourage contributions from your subordinates and share credit for accomplishments.

  Through your influence—and the leverage across the system that comes with it—you can shape your followers’ thinking, decisions, and actions. The voluntary nature of influence beyond authority captures the motivations and aspirations of followers. There is more capacity for collective effort because people dedicate themselves so generously to it. This enthusiasm gets people to give the proverbial “110 percent.” In your leading down, it manifests in how you supervise, mentor, and encourage your employees. You invest in people and they invest in you.

  Our Harvard colleague Joseph Nye coined the term soft power. It describes an option that leaders have for attracting or coercing allies and enemies. Your values, culture, policies, and institutions are the currency of soft power. Soft power compels others to “want what you want,” even in adversarial circumstances. Originally applied to international strategy to avert the use of military force when other less coercive options are available, soft power is equally applicable to organizational, professional, and interpersonal relations. It is another way of describing the goal of attaining influence beyond authority.

  Motivating others isn’t only dependent upon position. Every organization has people in the middle and lower ranks who have tremendous influence on what is being or can be accomplished. They often know how to cut through red tape. They include frontline people who interact directly with your customers, clients, and collaborators. What they say and do reflects directly upon you. They understand how to use the informal network that shadows—and sometimes overshadows—the formal organizational structure. They grasp the larger goal and inspire others to strive to achieve it. These people are meta-leaders even if they do not occupy a formal organizational position of overarching authority. Why is this important?

  Few leaders accomplish significant objectives solely through their formal subordinates. You recruit peers from other parts of your organization, garner the support of your boss, and engage outside constituencies, including customers, suppliers, politicians, or advocacy groups. As you evaluate your full range of options, you discover that your success is largely dependent on people and organizations over which you have no direct authority. Informal authority and influence may be your most important—and sometimes your only—option to generate momentum.

  Collaborative or Competitive?

  In our teaching, we conduct a simple exercise to convey a relevant lesson that helps students calculate the balance of their influence and authority. It illustrates how different perceptions of triumph and opportunity affect people’s actions and outcomes when engaged in a particular task.

  In the midst of a lecture, we stop and ask people to link up in an arm-wrestling position with the person sitting next to them. We tell them that their task, in thirty seconds, is to get the back of the other person’s hand down as many times as possible. We then wait five seconds and shout “Go!”

  The room erupts with commotion. On average, half of the pairs are pushing at one another with all their might. They hear “arm wrestling” and charge into competition. They aggressively employ force. At the conclusion of the exercise, they are tired, sore, and often frustrated. They each perceived a win-lose battle and they fought to win.

  Others hear something very different. Figuring that they are both trying to accomplish the same objective—“get the back of the hand of the other person down as many times as possible”—they opt to work together. After hearing “Go!” they energetically wave their hands back and forth, each touching the table in turn. At the end of the exercise, they are laughing and feeling quite jubilant.

  When the noise in the room calms down, we ask, “How many people got five or fewer?” Those who played the game as an adversarial contest raise their hands. “How many did you get?” we ask. The answers are uniformly “I got one,” “I got three,” or “I got zero.” It is always what “I” got.

  Then we ask, “How many people got more than five?” Those who played the game as a collaboration enthusiastically declare, “We got thirty,” “We got twenty each,” or “We got fifty together.” It is uniformly a declaration of what “we” got.

  It is this subtle distinction in thinking that the meta-leader understands and puts into practice. The lesson is derived from the field of game theory. Those who see the game as a contest invest great energy in defeating the other side. Once they start pushing, each meets strong resistance from the other. If the two arm wrestlers are of equal strength, they keep each other at a standstill, a zero-zero outcome. This likely reminds you of meetings you’ve attended.

  By contrast, those working together experience the enthusiasm of shared purpose leading to benefits that derive from the combined strength and fervor of both sides. The harder and better they work together, the more they both benefit. Rather than investing effort in obstructing one another—the muscle of the contest—effort is invested in achieving mutual success—the power of the collaboration. A shared win requires trust and unity of purpose. The arm-wrestling exercise is a metaphor for what can be gained when people genuinely work together. Just as the Cone-in-the-Cube symbolizes the meta-leadership perspective, this game theory exercise embodies the aspirational practices and outcomes of collaborative meta-leadership.

  At one of our seminars, a young, petite nurse happened to be sitting next to a burly, sixty-year-old surgeon. They paired up for the arm-wrestling exercise. They had never met before. When we said “Go!” the surgeon thrust the nurse’s arm down. She didn’t resist. He yanked her arm up
and pushed it down again. Once more, she offered no resistance. At this point, he looked at her quizzically. Without saying a word, she took his relaxed arm and waved it back and forth with hers so that each of their hands quickly touched the table. After two such swings, he exclaimed, “Oh, I get it!” and joined her in furious arm swinging.

  Afterwards, the nurse explained, “I knew if I told him beforehand that the point of the exercise was for us to work together, he would reject what I said.” She understood that in most professional situations, doctors have greater formal authority than nurses and many times feel that they have greater informal authority as well. “So I let him get two points and then I let him figure out the better alternative on his own. And once he figured it out, he did exactly what I’d hoped for,” she concluded. “We nurses learned how to do this a long time ago.”

  Privately, the surgeon later sheepishly admitted that it was among his most profound life lessons. He commented, “I was so focused on the arm wrestling that I didn’t even notice who I was with.” Winning does not always require asserting dominance. There are many options for exercising leverage.

  The power of this nurse was not in her physical strength. It was in her subtle, calculated influence with her arm-wrestling partner. She knew that she could not succeed unless they succeeded together. Her actions enabled the surgeon to realize the same thing, deliberately creating the conditions for success to emerge. By offering no initial resistance to the surgeon, the nurse showed him the futility of his reliance on force alone. It is such wisdom and “we-ness” that the meta-leader leverages, building the sense of “we” well beyond the confines of simple professional or organizational authority.

  There is prudence in knowing when to assert yourself and when to carefully support others as they take the lead. At times, you plant a seed that grows as someone else’s great idea. President Harry S. Truman once said, “It is amazing how much you can accomplish when you do not care who gets the credit.” Genuinely helping someone else to successfully solve a problem is a gracious and profoundly effective way to acquire influence.

  Now, let’s take a moment for some self-reflection. Are you trying to win points for yourself instead of working with your stakeholders to achieve your goals? When presented with a challenge, do you automatically kick into adversarial mode? Does your vocabulary include more “I” and “me” than “we”?

  If you persist in getting points just for yourself—even after the instructions have been clarified—you are not thinking meta-leadership.

  Try this exercise: Go into a meeting committed to paying $10 to others every time you say “I” or “me.” It will compel you to pay attention to the kind of language you use and what motivates it. When taken to the extreme, “I” can be blinding. How much did the meeting cost you? If it was $100 or more, think about how you might have achieved your objectives for $60 or even $40. Use this tangible measure to assess and reframe your mind-set to be more inclusive.

  Influence beyond authority was abundantly present during the Boston Marathon bombings response, as described in the first chapter. Its emergence encouraged swarm leadership to surface and thrive. Influence set the tone and formed the glue that connected people.

  By authority alone, leaders would not have been able to galvanize the generosity of spirit and action in an entire metropolitan area and leverage the massive systemic cooperative effort that delivered exceptional results that week. Government agencies worked together despite jurisdictional complexities. Citizens voluntarily gave of themselves to achieve something that no one government agency could have done alone.

  Place into this picture the cooperating partners in the arm-wrestling exercise. They understood that the challenge was not about “me.” It was about “we”—the arms jubilantly waving back and forth together. As a meta-leader, you strive to nurture that collective insight and then leverage it to accomplish remarkable results.

  Influence is not restricted to one-on-one interactions. The meta-perspective encourages you to think and act on a broad plane of influence well beyond your authority.

  Michael Brown is cofounder of the nonprofit international youth service organization City Year. In the cities it serves, the organization builds its profile and influence by having corps members engage in calisthenics in a public place each morning. In their uniforms of bright red tops, khaki pants, and work boots, these young people are hard to miss when doing jumping jacks in a plaza traversed by commuters. After this public ritual, City Year corps members head off to work in public schools. They focus on third through ninth grades, intervening to disrupt the three patterns that foreshadow dropping out of high school: poor attendance, disruptive behavior, and significantly below-average course performance in math and English. Corps members serve as tutors, mentors, and role models.

  “By being visible while engaged in a team-building exercise,” Brown explained to us, “we show the community that we intend to be positive contributors to their neighborhoods. It allows people to see young people energized and enthusiastic about service. We believe in the power of public rituals and were inspired by Joseph Campbell’s work, particularly The Power of Myth, as we sought to build the City Year culture and public image.” He added that “public rituals, like the calisthenics, build unity of purpose within the organization and send powerful messages to the community at large. They give people a common experience and story to tell. That is critically important in building influence.”

  Embedding Influence into Your Meta-Leadership

  To cultivate influence, hold a mirror up to yourself. More than the authority of a formal title, influence is about you. You’re “it.”

  No matter how, who, or where you lead, if you hope to build influence, focus on your own behaviors and attitudes. Know that people consistently watch you, taking cues from what you say and do. Be honest, straightforward, and generous in spirit and action. Be just as open to the ideas and perspectives of others as you hope they will be to yours. Take responsibility and be accountable. Share credit, and never shirk blame. Be a positive role model. Be congruent with and consistent about the expectations you set.

  Seek out someone who has influenced you as a leader and observe him or her in practice. What feels comfortable for you? President George W. Bush was famous for giving people humorous nicknames that implied a certain intimacy valued by admirers. His predecessor, President Bill Clinton, mastered the talent of making each person with whom he spoke feel as if he or she was the most important person in the room. These are both powerful tools for extending influence. And yet, if these practices do not reflect the real you, they will fall flat. To find your own ways to influence, observe others, observe yourself, be genuine, and then revise and adapt.

  Pay close attention to people and relationships. There is great value in the goodwill of authentic relationships. They are the glue that allows organizations and complex systems to progress, adapt, and succeed, all the more so in tough times. Consider a person you value, and ask yourself why you do. Likely it is about loyalty, respect, and trust, along with shared commitments and values. It no doubt also includes a share of camaraderie, humor, and playfulness. Build your other relationships on that same foundation. Ultimately, your measure of influence is reflected in the many people who are convinced that what you are doing and where you are going are worthy of their time and contribution.

  Influence is yours for as long as you interact with and lead people who know and respect you. There is no limit to how much influence you can accumulate. The arc of your authority is reflected on your résumé. Your influence is written in your character. It is an enduring life asset offering bountiful dividends.

  The influence-authority equation of leadership varies across cultures, generations, and purposes and is always evolving. Ilana Lerman is a community organizer and leader. Hers is an inclusive perspective on the practices of meta-leadership, generational differences, and generational commonalities in championing parallel missions.

  Ilana describe
s herself as a queer white Jewish millennial devoted to sparking change and supporting others to do the same. Both her grandfather and father were social justice leaders, traditions that she carries on. Her grandfather was a union man and ally to the civil rights and American Indian movements. He led a connected and purposeful life as a community organizer, and Ilana was inspired by his commitment.

  “As I grew up and came to see and experience injustice,” Ilana shared, “I knew that I could have a part, together with others, in creating change.” Likewise moved by her late father, Ilana described him as “a goofy, feminist, joyful human. He worked as a prosecutor, but grew angry at the failings of the criminal justice system, so he went searching for alternatives.” Her father learned about restorative justice from indigenous people and became determined to bring the process and philosophy to the Milwaukee County court system in Wisconsin. He eventually developed a restorative justice program for young people charged with misdemeanors. His leadership focused on the transformation of systems, communities, and individuals.

  This legacy translates into Ilana’s social justice leadership. “My grandfather and father led from love. They led in a way that called people into their highest dignity and potential, recognizing people as full beings with a mind, a heart, and a spirit worth fighting for.” So how does she see this happening? Through decentralized organizing in “leaderful movements”; capturing the hearts of the public; and cultivating the full self even while existing in an oppressive context.