Authority is not a dirty word (or is it?)

Around the digital halls of our fully remote team, Playgrounded has been having a spirited debate about a word:

Authority

Here’s how it goes:

🤓: Authority is a really good word to describe the confidence one feels to make decisions and show leadership in an organisation

😎: But it’s not used that way and also people kinda hate it

🤓: But that’s what the academics use

😎: I rest my case

Regardless, both camps, the 🤓 and the 😎 agree:

For humans to work good, they need to feel confident that they can make decisions and do the work of leading in their area of expertise. 

Kinda straight forward, yeah? 

Well actually, no. 

The complicating factor is that this feeling is created both by the individual doing the leading AND the collection of individuals that make up the group. Add to that that most (if not all) of the other individuals will be experts requiring their own confidence to make decisions and lead in their own fields - and you have yourself a confusing spicy banana of complexity.

And this is a massive problem for organisations to solve, cos if you don’t, you get these things showing up (you might recognise some 😬):

• Groups of people working for ages on a project, but not actually doing things

• People with different jobs solving the same problems and stepping on each others toes

• People becoming passive; complaining about problems and not solving them

• Managers having to micromanage

• People distant from the work being required to approve tasks that should be simple BAU

• People leaving because they feel frustrated with ‘lack of impact’ in the organisation

• … and many more

So what helps?

We think about this in three ways:

1. Decision making - Make the process by which individuals can make decisions overt. Write down the process, (or use one of the awesome frameworks like RACI or DACI that are already out there) by which individuals are authorised to make their own decisions. Run a workshop or present to the organisation, but whatever you do, make sure it is understood, owned by all and lived in the day to day. Celebrate when people use it, even (and especially) if it results in a ‘failure’. What you lose from a bump in the process will be repaid in the gains you incur when the team is truly empowered to do the work.

2. Responsibility - Acknowledge the responsibility that individuals have for their work. The low hanging fruit is recognising the successes of your people. What can be harder to do is giving your people the respect to own their failures. This is vitally important not only because ‘failures’ are actually learning events for humans, but moreso, when you let someone own a mistake, you also send a clear unambiguous signal that you fully authorise their responsibility for a project.

3. Confidence - Confidence is a strange thing. You don’t get it and then use it. You get it when you don’t have it but take action anyway. This makes it particularly hard to foster. But not impossible. If you want this feeling to grow in people you need to create chances for that individual to recognise when they did something challenging - this is the moment confidence is built. The best way to do that, is to have regular moments of reflection. We call this reflective practice and think it is one of the most important things wise leaders set up in their orgs.

A final thought, in helping people claim their authority to lead (and all people in a team can and should lead something), you need to claim and work on your own. 

This means applying all of the above to yourself.

And since leading is about going first, perhaps you are the perfect place to start?