“Thinking Out Loud”
By Wendell Jordan-Brangman
Radient Pearl Contributor
Why do you consider yourself a leader?
As stated in the previous blog, “Being an Authentic Leader (Introduction): Your Intentions Shine Through”, leadership is a lifestyle that influences others through both intentional words and intentional actions. Your ability to function as a leader is independent of your actual job, title, formal training, or organizational position, all of which are merely pathways to and tools of leadership. In today’s article we’ll briefly explore the true source of power for an authentic leader and how such a leader intentionally interacts with others to bring about positive changes in people’s lives.
“He that thinketh he leadeth when no one is following, is merely taking a walk.” - John C. Maxwell
Do you have true power? One definition of ‘power’ from the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “possession of control, authority, or influence over others”. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), there are five basic sources of power: formal authority, reward power, penalty power, expert power, and referent power. Without going into the details, the first three sources (formal authority, reward power, penalty power) are typically bestowed through formal delegation by someone in an organizational position of authority or because of your position in the organization (including families). Expert power is attained due to your credentials, either explicitly through recognition of your formal training or experience in an area of specialty or implicitly because of specific skills and competencies that others have observed (directly or indirectly). Referent power, however, is the most difficult to attain yet it is the most authentic because it is bestowed upon you when others experience the positiveness of your influence and therefore naturally gravitate towards you. This is not the same as charisma - charisma is superficial, not requiring substance or evidence to perform its charm, whereas referent power is only attained after people see and experience evidence of your positive influence on their lives or within their environment.
The most significant aspect of referent power is that, unlike the other sources of power, it cannot be taken away by anyone other than the people who see you as a leader. No close-of-business (COB), demotion, job loss, de-credentialing, or organizational hierarchy can remove that power. Nevertheless, you can give away the privilege of leadership if you fail to lead authentically. The sincerest and most evident test of your leadership comes when business shuts down for the day or if you lose your job, position, title, or credentials. When you turn around, is anyone still following you?
“A true leader is a leader who serves. They serve people. They serve their best interests, so they may not always be popular or impressive. But because true leaders are motivated by love and not by a desire to get the glory for themselves, they are willing to pay the price.” - Eugene B. Habecker
As a popular saying goes, talk is cheap! Many people have strong opinions about the way things ought to be and some people are more vocal about their opinions than others. However, even a cursory review of historical leaders reveals a singular clear fact - they DID something and OTHERS followed! An authentic leader can be described in one sense as someone who intentionally lives in such a way as to tangibly improve the situation of others. As stated in the introductory article, servant leadership is the hallmark of an authentic leader. So how can a leader serve others? Through edifying words that build people up and encourage them, performing activities that empower people to act and that change the environment they can influence, and by living as an example to others. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the core competency to enable an authentic leader’s speech, actions, and lifestyle. Though we’ll touch on some aspects of EI in the next couple of paragraphs, EI is a separate topic all of its own that will be covered in future articles in this series.
How do people feel after you talk to them? What is the atmosphere like after you’ve said or done something? Are people speaking up openly or do you have to coerce interaction? Are you surprised when people leave your team or seem to no longer want to meet with you like they used to? Do you observe consistent growth and maturity in the people that you lead and can you honestly attribute any growth or maturity to your direct influence? These are just a few examples of the tough but essential questions every leader needs to constantly ask themselves. Though you can’t read people’s minds (no matter how hard you try), you can gauge the answers through their subsequent reactions and behaviors. Even without training as a counselor, therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist, it’s your personal responsibility as a leader to make every earnest effort to understand how what you say and what you do impacts others for better or for worse, and to make immediate and intentional adjustments to correct your unproductive (and potentially destructive) behaviors.
This self-introspection is not an annual or semi-annual activity or one that is reserved only when you have ‘a few hours to spare’. Rather, this type of self-introspection must occur after every single interaction, not with the intent to find fault but for the purpose of either affirming positive behaviors that need to continue when interacting with that specific person or identifying negative behaviors that need to stop when interacting with that specific person. It must occur after every interaction because every person is different and every situation is different. The goal is not to be all things to all people - then you’ll become nothing to everyone - but to be intentional in your interactions as a leader knowing that every person you interact with is either a leader or a potential leader. This means that what works with one person may not work with another person or what worked in previous situations may not work in the current situation. It’s sometimes said that past behavior is a predictor of future performance but this has been taken way out of context. Human beings are not automatons that stay constant but are sentient individuals with evolving experiences, needs, and desires. Past behavior is only a starting point for how to interact with others as a leader, it’s not the final answer (spoiler alert: there is no final or definitive answer!).
If people are afraid of you or your reactions to situations and things they tell you, if their decisions are influenced by fear of how you’ll respond rather than by what they believe is right, if every decision needs to be run through you, then chances are very high that you’re not an authentic leader with true (i.e., referent) power but are instead someone with transient power who people will stop following at the first opportunity.
So what are you to do as an authentic leader? “Be the change you want to see in the world.” - Uncertain*
*NOTE: Popularly attributed to Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi but in reality considered to be a pithy summation of his ideas along with those of multiple others, with some scholars attributing it to author Arleen Lorrance
As an authentic leader, you must constantly seek to evolve the way you think, speak, act, and live if you are to remain authentic and effective. Complacency and stagnation are recipes for loss of referent power because people will see you for who you really are, whether or not you want them or you intend for them to see. It all boils down to a simple question: do people follow you because they feel obligated or because they want to?
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