CONTENTS
Leading Beyond Authority
What is leading beyond authority?
What does it mean to lead beyond authority?
Step by step or leaps and bounds?
Stories of people who have done it
Ten keys to leading beyond authority
- What should you leave behind?
- Adapting to a new environment
- Who do you need to be?
- Pace and timing
- Resetting your radar
- The sources of power
- Playing different roles
- Courage and caution
- Consensus versus coalition
- Passion and resonance
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We all know about leadership. You take on a task, with a budget and a team. You’re the one in authority; you’re in charge. You set the objectives and have a timescale. And then it’s your job to pull it all together, to motivate the people who work for you and to get on with delivering it.
On the whole, most leadership development tells us how to perform well in this situation. Increasingly, however, this is not the only sort of leadership we are being called to deliver. Often, you’re not in charge; in fact, no one is. There is no budget. And there are no people who have to work for you.
Executives have to produce change within their organisations, but across functions they don’t control. Policemen have to work alongside health and housing professionals. Politicians have to draw communities together to plan for the future. Directors have to work with partners outside their business. Non-executives have to influence decisions that are not theirs to make.
Leadership is the incremental influence that a person has beyond his or her formal authority.
Across every sector, this is happening more and more. Boundaries are blurring. Authority is becoming less clear-cut. Partnership is proliferating. The traditional leadership tools work – but nothing like as well, or as often, as they used to. Increasingly, you need to supplement them with others. You need to lead beyond your formal realm of authority.
Copyright © Julia Middleton