The Power of Leadership
Leadership comes with a certain perceived power whether you like it or not. Your words, your actions, your emotional reactions have power. A leader must responsibly and intentionally recognize and understand how they affect and influence the day-to-day workings of their team. Traci and Rob discuss the power of leadership and how to teach new leaders on your team about their growing influence.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human podcast, where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it's personal, too.
Traci:
Hey, Rob, how are you doing?
Rob:
I'm good, Traci. How are you?
Traci:
Good. I was just thinking about power and leadership, and I wanted to talk about that today. Do you think that you hold a lot of power as one of the key leaders of Sparkbox?
Rob:
Yes, I do. Now, that's a topic that I've struggled with on and off over the years about the power that I hold and not wanting to see it that way. That word comes with a lot of baggage, I think, too. But I think that it's undeniable that, I think, leaders have a lot of unspoken, not invisible power.
Traci:
Yeah. And I'm glad that you basically highlighted the word "power" because I used it in the question for a reason, because it is a word that holds a lot of baggage. And we look at it as being either good power or bad power. But I think what's key to remember is as a leader, you have power, there's just no denying it. What are you doing with it? How are you living out that power? Are you recognizing it every day or most days? Are you not recognizing it because you don't like the word "power," you don't want to think you have the power over anyone and looking at it in a bad way? How do you think you look at it on a day-to-day basis?
Rob:
I think about it as a tool almost. That it's something that for a long time, I tried to deny its existence, wanting to pretend it wasn't there. And a lot of those conversations start with, "What's the power dynamic?" like there's a power dynamic or imbalance here. And I think that it was really tempting to want to say, "No, I want to be one of the people that I'm working with and not talk about it or not have to deal with it," and I think it much more of as something that is always there now, it's ever-present. And just because I may not see it, or maybe even my personality isn't wired to think about power dynamics in a certain way, most people's are is what I've learned, and that it absolutely is something that I have to recognize is there and it squirts out in all of kinds of weird ways.
Traci:
Mm-hmm. What do you mean by that?
Rob:
Just conversations and getting feedback and if you can trust that you're getting good feedback when there is that power dynamic. Sometimes, I have to be aware and intentional to know that if I ask a direct question, that the power dynamic is being considered in how the answer is coming back to me. And that means that there is sometimes very convoluted ways that as a leader, I have to try to get feedback, be it try to be anonymous forms or listening to what other people are saying and what their intent is and listen between their words, because it's pretty common, I think, for people to soften what they're saying to people who have that power over them and what their career or compensation looks like or any of those things.
Traci:
Yeah, and I think it is something that we have to think about every day and we have to recognize and we have to accept. And it sounds like for you, that's what happened on your journey is this acceptance that, "I have the power. Now, how do I navigate it when I'm communicating with people on my staff?"
I remember going through the same thing. I was actually promoted from within, so I went from being a peer to then being promoted to a manager. And I can still remember to this day—and it was so many years ago—but I can remember walking into the kitchen and my coworkers who used to be my peers and now I'm the boss stopped talking. And it was that moment of like, "Well, wait, what? Are you talking about me? Are you not talking to me?" They were probably talking about something, maybe it wasn't me, but it was something that they didn't feel comfortable talking about in front of management. And that was a turning point for me as like, "Oh, okay. I have to understand that there are new dynamics at play. How am I going to navigate those dynamics? And how am I going to be sure that I am handling my position well?"
I've talked before about you not wanting to fall into that Michael Scott from The Office way. Sometimes managers do—when they get really nervous—and they just want you to love them and they still want to be part of the gang and they just, "I want to be your best friend," and forget that there are those dynamics or try to deny that they're those dynamics.
Or there's people who get power-hungry, right, and they become more like The Devil Wears Prada. And they all of a sudden are looking down their nose at people and being like, "I have power over you and I would like you to go get my lunch and make sure my coffee cup is full." But we don't want to operate on either one of those spectrums. We want to be in the middle where we're actually still able to have a human relationship with these people that we work with, but also understand that the dynamics are there. They're just there.
Rob:
Yeah. They are there. And I think that that intentionality, I think, is key to so many different things that you and I end up talking about. I think it's really important to then make that transition from acceptance to figuring out, “Okay, if this is existing and this is a thing, is how do I use it for benefit, for the good of the company, right?” I think that's a really nuanced place to be in such that I have learned and I'm aware now that sometimes just my mere presence in a meeting or vocalizing a little bit on a topic gives it a different weight. And it's one of those things that is that I can lend the power of the position that I hold and give that authority to some somebody else or a topic that I care about that need it, that doesn't have it. It's that whole difference between implied authority and given authority, right?
I own half the business. Ben and I, we have all the authority we need and everybody knows it—it's not a secret, and it goes without saying. But there are lots of other good things that are happening that I can give that authority to somebody else and help them accomplish those goals. And I actually think that's a key part of being an effective leader, especially when you're growing a leadership team, is allowing people parts of the authority so that they can build it over time too.
Traci:
Mm-hmm. Because I see sometimes leaders struggle with this, is they really do want to hand over the authority or the reins. Do you ever find yourself having trouble completely handling it over or needing to grab it back at certain points?
Rob:
I think this is a really interesting topic and this gets into raising leaders and all of that kind of stuff, too, and for me, the deal that I've made with all of our newly appointed leaders over the years has been, "Hey, we're sitting in my office, this is a free space. We can disagree about all the things. When we walk out that door, unity, right?" I've got your back, you've got my back. This is the place to disagree. When we walk out, we have to be on the same page.
To flip that, with new leaders, what I often want to get them doing is them communicating with the team, right? Even if it's a decision that I've made or I've heavily influenced, I let that person communicate it and own the authority over that decision because that's their area that I've given them and that's something I want them to have responsibility over. And slowly over time, what happens is they do all the communication and they become the face of that particular area of expertise or practice or whatever in the business delegation of things and it happens pretty quick. When they become the mouthpiece for that topic, then they get all the questions. And even if we're still solving those together, that authority is something I can give them. And now they have to deal with the new power dynamic that they have—and that's a whole different part of this conversation of that power dynamic can trickle down,—but I think that's a key part of raising up new leaders, too.
Traci:
Yeah, definitely. And allowing them to shine when they need to shine or can shine, but also allowing them to fail. And I think one of the hard things about letting a leader lead is letting them fail and not coming in and trying to save everything every single time.
Rob:
Yeah. I think that's a key part of it, is not coming in and saving it. I don't think if you're trying to raise leaders, you can be in a position where you are then becoming the white knight coming in to take care of something.
I do think it can be very effective to take responsibility, though, and not be someone who's saving the day, but being somebody who's jumping on the grenades. That's a key part of what I think it means sometimes to save other leaders in my organization. And that's what I think unity means, is there has been times where we've made a decision, they've communicated it, things haven't worked out like we wanted, and they get some flack for it, and I can step in and say, "Nope, nope. This one's on me. I'll take responsibility for this." I think that's another effective way, not to take the credit, but take the downsides of things.
Traci:
Yeah, exactly. I think that is key.
What about when you as a leader or the owner of the company are in a meeting, and you're watching a debate happen or you know that you're going to start a topic where there's going to be healthy debate—hopefully healthy conflict—do you tend to speak last, speak first? Where do you feel like you find yourself in those conversations, knowing that your words have power?
Rob:
Yeah, they have a lot of power. I try to be really careful because I've learned a couple things. One: I can shut down a productive conversation with a single idea. The second thing that I've learned is I can mobilize people by speaking, I can speak things into existence. And I have to be really careful with both those things.
I think that trying to speak last or trying to encourage other ideas before giving anything that I've got is something I absolutely do, but I've also been seeing the effects of, "Hey, I had this idea the other day, what do y'all think?" and then I turn around a couple of days later and there's a team mobilized around that idea and it's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That wasn't even like a real idea. That was just a thought I had," and they're like, "Well, why are you doing this?" "Well, Rob said," and I'm like, "Okay, that's a horrible idea."
Traci:
Yeah, and I have so many clients that that has happened to and it's really difficult because it hinders you from being able to be part of the idea generation process. It's almost like you have to say before you toss out an idea, "I'm just tossing this out there. I don't want anybody to act upon it." But because your words do hold so much power and because people want to please you, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, you find that you can be in this position where you have to qualify you were brainstorming in a big meeting.
Rob:
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think it's—for me—one of the effective things that I find is when I'm in meeting, especially with smaller groups or even one-on-one, is calling attention to the power dynamic that exists. And just saying those words is like, "Hey, I realize there's a power dynamic here and you may not be able to share exactly what you're feeling, but..." and then say things. And making sure that everyone else in the room knows that I'm aware it exists and they can be comfortable with it existing I think helps a little bit break down some of those things and you might get the "Oh, okay. Well, power dynamic exists, but at least he's aware."
Traci:
Yeah. It's funny, when we're facilitating sessions, we always say, "Look, this is a safe space and we want to get to the last 10% of truth." And the reason why it's hard to get to that last 10% of truth in a meeting where you're really trying to solve a problem or solve an issue within the team is because of this power dynamic.
People are scared to say what they really, really think because they're not sure if they're going to pay for it on the other end, whether it's pay for it by the owner or the CEO or by their fellow leader or peer. They don't want to call somebody's baby ugly or they don't want to say, "The reason this is happening is because your leadership has gotten us here." So it's really hard, and we find that people are constantly holding back, but it's that last 10% that really leads to breakthrough, that leads to change, that leads to higher profits and more success.
It's creating that safe space, which comes through trust and oftentimes, we find that the leader, the top leader, the head of the company, the owners of the company, they have to be the ones that say "It's okay. It's okay to be completely honest. You're not going to hurt my feelings. It might be an ow, but it's only going to be an ow for a second or two, and I want to get to the truth, I want to make things better, so speak and speak openly and honestly." But not a lot of leaders feel completely comfortable with that. It's hard to hear some feedback, but again, if you don't recognize the power dynamic, you're not going to get to the breakthrough you really need to get to, even in your day-to-day meetings, not to mention your bigger strategic meetings that you're trying to have.
Rob:
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think we have to recognize it and I think that if we get that truth, to get that last 10% requires time and trust and lots and lots of effort. And it's so hard to break down that power dynamic even a little bit, and it's so easy to put it right back where it was. That it takes constant work to get to a place where you can get any kind of honesty and safety for everyone, but one little slip-up will put those walls right back up. And you'll be right back to square one, and it'll be twice as hard the next time. And I think that it can be infuriating. I think that that's the hardest part.
Anytime we promote somebody to a leadership position at Sparkbox, I always have to have this conversation. I'm like, "Okay, you now have new peers," and they're like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, you have new peers now. We have these kinds of meetings. This is the conversation. You don't realize it yet, but some of the relationships you've built that are close will become tougher because of a power dynamic that’s going to happen." And almost universally I get this look like, "Sure, I've been... Come on." They just don't get it. And it's like, "No, no, no," and it's part of that recognition of the power dynamic that exists between leaders and the individuals I think has to be compensated with some kind of structure for those leaders to bond together and feel safe together.
Traci:
Yeah, I think that's true. And I think also the best thing that you can do for a new leader is to make sure that you're coaching them on their emotional intelligence, on their reactions, on their ego, on where their humility and empathy is showing up, and where it's not because they are now in a position where they are being watched and they are having to make tough decisions and they're getting feedback that they've never gotten before in a way they've never gotten it before.
And unfortunately, there's just not a lot of training for that. This is not something you learn in college. And this is definitely not something you learn when you're a practitioner in a business before you move into leadership or management or anything like that. It has to be learned somewhere if you really, really want to be a good leader, so you need to be having these conversations and pointing these things out because we all have egos and we all have feelings. So how we react—just like what you're saying—you can build those walls back up just as quickly as you tear them down with one reaction and that all comes from our emotional intelligence and our ability to balance and to have perspective and to see the truth in things and to not be taking it as a personal affront.
One of the things that's really interesting about leadership is all of a sudden, the company becomes a little closer to your heart and to you as a person. Whereas before leadership, it's a bit easier to separate the two. It's a bit easier to say, "Well, Sparkbox is here and I'm here." And as you rise up and become a leader, all of a sudden the things start to merge a little bit more. So when people are critical of Sparkbox, all of a sudden it's like, "Ow. I feel that they're being critical of me because I was part of the group behind that decision." And that can become a little bit of a scary place for a new leader, to start to take things really personally, and that's where these kinds of reactions come from, where you're like, "Ugh. Don't you see it this way?" so you can build back up those walls that we're trying to keep level.
Rob:
Yeah, you said a couple interesting things there. One of them was "coaching new leaders." I have yet to meet the person who is a natural-born leader and knows how to do those things without being coached and showing them what to do. And I think that that's a... So many times, I see other business owners and even mistakes that I've made is promote somebody and then be, "Hey, here you go." And then react poorly when things don't go well and, "Oh, how come you just didn't ...? What do you mean you don't know how to do this?" And it's like, no, no, that's not something people get. I think that's really, really, really important, to just give people the support they need to get that practice.
Traci:
Oh, yeah. Leadership is a skill. It's a skill, and it has to be learned. You might have some innate qualities that help give you a little bit of an advantage here and there, but ultimately it's a skill that you have to learn just like any other skill.
Rob:
Yeah, and I think the other thing that you were getting at a little bit was that whole back to that unity point, right? Mistakes are going to be made. We make them together. And you have to have my back and I have to have yours in a leadership situation when you're on a team with somebody. The thing that will erode trust with a group is dissent. It's one of those that you have to learn that as a leader of leaders to be like, "No, no, no, my job when we're not in my office is to have your back, even if I think you're wrong sometimes, and your job is to have my back when you're having individual meetings, because if we don't, we're in deep doo-doo."
Traci:
Yeah, I think that's really important. I think that it's also important to know as a group of leaders that you will make mistakes, and that you can come to each other with those mistakes. And if you feel as a team that maybe the decision you made or whatever was a mistake, you can share that with the rest of the team and say, "Look, we're not perfect people. We're going to make mistakes sometimes, but we are going to do the best we can all the time with the best intentions and always going towards our mission and vision." And I think that's important, too, is to know that we need to be unified, but we don't need to be perfect.
Rob:
No. I hope I didn't say that we needed to be perfect. But I think that there's this whole idea of you never can punch down, right?
Traci:
Right.
Rob:
It's always the responsibility has to be taken at the highest level possible that was part of that decision and punching up is okay. I think that giving some of our leaders the ability to say is like, "Hey, this is something that I was told," is okay sometimes, right?
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
That's my job, to be the person that it rolls up to.
Traci:
Yeah, I think that you were clear on that. I think that what's interesting is the lack of unity, or maybe it's like… I'm not sure what the exact word would be… But with new leaders, sometimes why I find that they'll stray off the song sheet that everybody's agreed to in the leadership meeting is fear. It's that I used to be part of the peer group and now I'm a leader and they're unhappy with this decision we made and so now I feel like, oh, I don't want them to stop liking me or inviting me to lunch, so I'm going to go ahead and say, "Well, maybe you're right." They stray off the unity song sheet out of fear.
And I do think it's a great reminder that you say to them, "Let's disagree a ton in this room, but when we go out the door, we're going to be unified," because that's a big part of Patrick Lencioni’s model as well is we want to come to a commitment through our healthy conflict and once we get to that commitment, we stick to it. We have agreed and now we're going to go forth because that's the best thing for the team overall.
That's why it's great to hear that you're doing that with new leaders, because they're the ones that are going to feel that fear, or they don't have their sea legs completely when these new initiatives or new decisions are being made. And so it's a great reminder to them to say, "Look, this is part of the gig. This is part of being a leader."
Rob:
This is the work.
Traci:
This is the work, yeah.
Rob:
This is the work.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
Yeah. Well, this has been a lot of fun. We started with power dynamics and I think to sum up that really quickly is we're saying is they exist, no matter if you want them to or not, they exist. And being intentional with them, you can turn them into an asset rather than a liability. And we talked quite a bit about new leaders and how to raise them up and how giving them part of your authority explicitly allows them to do their job and then how important unity is.
Traci:
Yes.
Rob:
Yeah. Thanks, Traci. I appreciate you.
Traci:
Great. Thank you. Fun as always.
Announcer:
This podcast would not be possible without the amazing communications team at Sparkbox. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and tell your friends to listen as well. The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. Thanks for listening.
