In our years of consulting work, we have conducted numerous organizational assessments.
In that work, we have found that one question reveals more about an organization’s culture than almost any other. The answer employees give to it often tell us all we need to know about the workplace they face.
The question has to do with the use of organizational authority, that workplace quality which stands as not only the primary distinction between bosses and employees, but arguably the only distinction between them.
Consider: supervisors might be smarter than their subordinates. They might be better problem solvers, or have more technical knowledge, or exercise more skill in managing others. But the only thing that is invariably true is that they hold more organizational authority.
Authority is the one and only quality that is shared by every supervisor. It is what allows leaders to create culture within an organization, what allows them to determine whether risk is embraced or avoided, whether questions are valued or discouraged, whether information is shared or hoarded.
Authority is, in many ways, the currency of leadership.
The question, then? To what extent do leaders use their authority for employees as opposed to on them?
Organizations in which employees feel that leaders use their authority for them—protecting them, facilitating their work, supplying them with resources—are almost always focused, cohesive, and optimistic about the future.
And in similar fashion, organizations in which employees feel that leadership uses its authority on them—isolating them, intimidating them, using their work to further personal agendas—are often characterized by resentment, apathy, and conflict.
Organizations are not monolithic, of course, and variations can almost always be found from department to department. But these results have been exceedingly consistent in our experience. Moreover they confirm what we all intuitively know already – that we give our efforts and allegiance far more readily to leaders who protect us than those who exploit us.
Personal and ongoing reflection, then, on this one simple question— how you exercise your authority as a leader and to what ends you turn it— can be a powerful means of transforming your office, department, or organization.