On Personal Authority, Freedom and Connection

I start from the idea that a per­son­’s growth as a leader is relat­ed to under­stand­ing and tran­scend­ing old­er con­di­tioned emo­tions and con­di­tioned respons­es, espe­cial­ly those pat­terns of think­ing, feel­ing and action that induce us to play small­er or larg­er than we are.

Take, for exam­ple, a leader who hap­pened to grow up in a house­hold where she often medi­at­ed con­flicts and cre­at­ed har­mo­ny between her par­ents, how she some­how end­ed up play­ing a sim­i­lar role as head of her com­pa­ny with mem­bers of her senior team — to the detri­ment of the team’s deci­sion-mak­ing. In a way she had to learn how to resolve the con­di­tions of her child­hood in order to release the full lead­er­ship pres­ence she was called to express and occu­py the role she was meant to play. It’s not that she was inad­e­quate to her exec­u­tive role; she was­n’t and she was beloved by her team, but every­body rec­og­nized there were times when she was not using her per­son­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al author­i­ty to actu­al­ly weigh in with her own views, mak­ing her own choic­es in the midst of team conflict.

Or take anoth­er leader, some­one who is bira­cial with an inter­na­tion­al back­ground, whose full “edu­ca­tion” via pres­ti­gious schools involved learn­ing to keep his head down, treat pow­er­ful oth­ers with def­er­ence (even if unde­served), and do more than his peers to get the same or less­er rewards.

In this sec­ond case, as he became increas­ing­ly suc­cess­ful in the work that fol­lowed his edu­ca­tion, he could feel old pat­terns aris­ing. Denied the advance­ment of his ideas by the pow­ers above him, he held onto a lim­it­ing job role far longer than he could or should have. He kept try­ing, kept wait­ing for recog­ni­tion, kept feel­ing unap­pre­ci­at­ed, unheard and both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly stuck. He became self-ques­tion­ing. He asked him­self if all his edu­ca­tion and work expe­ri­ence would only result in him leav­ing his cur­rent job, dis­ap­point­ing or anger­ing oth­ers on the way out, only to find the same prob­lems else­where. He pro­gressed when he began trust­ing him­self in spite of the “one-down” con­di­tion­ing to which he’d been sub­ject­ed. He searched out a bet­ter job and he took it, not let­ting oth­ers or guilt from old con­di­tion­ing define him.

The first of these sto­ries is about not tak­ing hold of one’s per­son­al author­i­ty; the sec­ond is about find­ing it over time. There are just as many sto­ries about the “Big Hat, No Cat­tle” phe­nom­e­non of indi­vid­u­als attempt­ing to play larg­er than their author­i­ty war­rants. I’m not talk­ing about those with imposter syn­drome (that’s anoth­er ver­sion of not grasp­ing per­son­al author­i­ty). I’m talk­ing about the oppo­site, where a cer­tain amount of gall defines a per­son­’s pres­ence. Here I think of a cou­ple of con­sul­tant col­leagues who made exor­bi­tant demands of their clients. Said one: “Either I report direct­ly to the pres­i­dent or I resign!” while anoth­er bragged: “Pret­ty soon I’ll be able to get rid of that man­ag­er who’s block­ing the Pro­gram!” Nei­ther was suc­cess­ful and both were soon gone. Yikes! Such exam­ples also feel to me like con­di­tioned respons­es, ones con­fus­ing per­son­al author­i­ty with ego — old selves still in con­trol of a per­son who wants to lead.

It takes some­thing to break out of such pow­er­ful pat­terns. Either too much or too lit­tle per­son­al author­i­ty is prob­lem­at­ic. Achiev­ing the right bal­ance is a quest that is not only about a kind of per­son­al psy­cho­log­i­cal lib­er­a­tion, but also about find­ing the right ways to be present and to con­nect with oth­er human beings. As long as the pat­terns and pri­or­i­ties of an old­er self remain, our light is either hid­den beneath the prover­bial bushel bas­ket or is turned up a lit­tle too high. Both it seems to me ulti­mate­ly avoid the risk of being our­selves. Per­son­al author­i­ty is innate­ly need­ed to lead and, if I have it right, is about doing things that both release us to be our full selves and also help us con­nect to oth­ers at the core.