Authority

Authority Does Come from Title, but it is earned through actions. Inept executives fritter away their authority by their behaviour, taking the counsel of none but themselves and failing to listen and learn from others. Authority is what holds leadership promise together. With it, you can lead; without it, you might as well do something else.

Many leaders come to authority naturally; they embrace it totally and wield it like a sword to demonstrate their power. Others adopt it reluctantly, seemingly shirking from the responsibility. In truth, neither approach is wholly right nor wholly wrong. Leaders must embrace command, but they must recognize that their power stems from the people they lead.

There are five attributes of authority as it applies to leadership:

• Decisiveness. Leaders need to exert their ideas. The ability to make tough decisions is crucial to a leader’s ability to lead.
• Accomplishment. Leaders must, plain and simple, get things done. We want our leaders to do what they tell us they will do. When the CEO of a public company promises a new product or service as well as increased earnings and profits, he must deliver.
• Persuasiveness. Operating in a vacuum—or in a closed office—does not a leader make. No leader of an enterprise larger than a three-person operation can do much by him. Sometimes autocratic executives will get into trouble because their heavy-handed management style turns people off. Then when the heat is on and they need the support of others, they will often find no one standing behind them. All leaders need the cooperation and collaboration of others.
• Courage. Leaders must hold to the power of their beliefs and convictions, provided they are ethical, honest, and in keeping with organizational goals and beliefs. Standing up to bully bosses requires guts. Standing up to shareholders who want job cuts for short-term profits also takes guts. Standing up to public perceptions that seem reasonable but are unrealistic and uninformed also requires a measure of guts. But courage is essential to leadership.
• Inspiration. Entrepreneurial ventures have something of a moon-shot quality to them. These ventures, be it a new software company or a technology outfitter or a service provider, require a healthy dose of dreaming to succeed. People who work for those ventures feel jazzed when they come to work; they are inspired by doing something new, different, and beneficial for their customers and themselves.
• Decisiveness. Accomplishment. Persuasiveness. Courage. Inspiration. These attributes reinforce your authority to lead.
While authority is essential to leadership, it does not come automatically with rank or position. Authority, like trust, must be earned, but here’s the difference. Trust requires time to develop. Authority, especially in most hierarchies, is assumed. People will grant you permission to lead.

Authority is a divisible commodity that managers ration among work group members via the process of delegation. In this sense it is the basis for organizational order, logic, and control. It is the basis of status and hierarchy in the organization.

A view of power in authority terms connotes a system of dependencies, and, in this situation, distribution is the key issue. Each member of the organization relates to others in a power role relationship that constrains each member. If one gains power, it is at the expense of others in the group. If one gains, others lose. All of us can exercise authority over other people and, in turn, can be under another’s authority. It is part of all organized group activity that results in enhancement or limitation of our ability to do. Thus, power is a part of organizational concepts such as authority, control, direction, competition, conflict, coordination, planning, budgeting, staffing, and all other administrative functions.