Leadership with authority

Leadership plays a crucial role in forming successful teams. Ten lessons from my own practice on how to develop ‘authoritative’ leadership. It all starts with trusting the group as well as yourself.

With 16 years of experience as a director and over 30 years as a manager, I know that managing a high-performance team is an intensive job. It requires quite a lot from you as a manager. First and foremost, it’s about the ability to let go and trust the group. Whereas the natural reflex of many managers is to direct and control, the ‘authoritative’ leader in my experience is precisely someone who trusts the process and the innovative power of the team as a group. Those who can do that will ensure you and your team can #workwithtrust.

As a manager, what else do you need to become an ‘authoritative’ and connecting leader?

1. Create free space

Perhaps the most important lesson is that too much direction stifles. As a manager, you must therefore create free latitude within which your employees have the autonomy to perform their work as they see fit, without fear of reprisals for mistakes. Also, let people experiment with new procedures or working methods they have thought up, and with solutions they come up with. Doing so creates an inspired and innovative team and engages employees.

2. Ensure openness and transparency

Ensure open communication about decisions you take as manager, the (strategic) goals you want to set, and possible opportunities and threats for the organisation. People like to know what is going on in the context of their work and want to discuss and think about it. By including them in your considerations, you involve your colleagues in the policy and give them the confidence that you zi

3. Help where you can

As a manager, you are not on an island. Authority also comes with service to the group you work with. That starts with an open office door inviting your team members to walk in when needed. Your job as a leader is also to help your people achieve their tasks, let them learn by coaching them, assisting them when they have problems, and encouraging them to explore their own limits and surpass themselves. Servant leadership makes it easier for people to come to you with problems and for trust to grow.

4. Organise your own opposition

It might be a little difficult initially, but give room to criticism and critical voices within your team, even if it concerns you. Also, remember this when recruiting new employees; do not hire clones of yourself or yes-men. Also, remember that most criticism is constructive in nature and task- and role-oriented and not meant personally. Make sure every voice in the team is heard and given attention. This way, you will ensure more support and stronger decision-making.

5. Use the differences

Diversity counts. Differences within the team should be respected and celebrated as much as possible to achieve the organisation’s goal and inspire each other. That one quiet colleague can be a source of ideas as long as you give him or her the opportunity and strength to stand up and speak out. Steer clear of this when recruiting new staff too: a team that is too homogeneous lacks the ability to think out of the box and thus loses innovative capacity.

6. Reward initiative

Inspire and encourage your team members to take the initiative, alone or together, for new ways of working, for instance, or let someone take up a new project. You will sometimes hear “Can I do that?”, because not everyone is so sure of themselves. But with some extra support, people often rise above themselves and be proud of themselves. Then also acknowledge this and celebrate successes. Don’t worry if you fail; it is a valuable learning moment. Above all, respect the ownership of ideas that emerge from the group and do not appropriate other people’s good ideas!

7. Offer structure and a vision

Freedom is all you want, but no freedom without boundaries. Even if you offer your team a lot of freedom, there will always be a need for structure and direction and certainly a need for vision. This is also what people ask of you as a manager and what they expect from you: a consistent way of leading within clear organisational structures and a clear view of the management and future of the organisation. Such a framework also provides security and creates trust.

8. Protect where necessary

As a leader, you also offer protection to the group and the individuals in that group; the group needs to know it is safe. This can be done in various ways, for example by acting as a buffer between the team and the outside world or the rest of the organisation, but also by knowing what is going on in the world and acting on that when threats and opportunities arise, and sometimes by protecting or supporting individuals, for example in the case of personal problems.

9. Acknowledge your mistakes

Another tricky one for many managers: acknowledge your mistakes and say sorry when necessary. An authoritative leader is not infallible but can be vulnerable when necessary. Paradoxical, perhaps, but it requires quite a bit of self-confidence to do that and admit and fix your mistakes. The latter, of course, is just as important: ‘walk the talk’.

10. Know Thyself

I should have started with this: know yourself. It is said to have been written above the gate of Apollo’s temple in Delphi: ‘Know Thyself’, wise counsel. To be authoritative, you have to be authentic, and that comes with self-knowledge, knowing what kind of person you are and your strengths and weaknesses. Critical reflection on your own actions plays an important role in this, don’t spare yourself.

Ad Hofstede | #workwithtrust © 2023

Curious about my approach to improving leadership? Contact me for an appointment; I will gladly come by for a short presentation: call +31 (0)6 24 58 45 90 or email contact@adhofstede.nl.