"Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly."
Leader efficacy is a booming field in the areas of strategy and organizational behavior. There are various styles and ideas that link it all together. Research by Chan and Drasgow contends that leadership boils down to personality, skills, and values, which all work to create leadership efficacy. This culminates to the right potential, but requires additional confidence to lead; however, I believe this definition leaves out an understanding that can be found by exploring what it means to be in an authoritative position and to submit to an authoritative position.
The beginning of this relationship is found in understanding our relationship to control. What I mean by this is that human tendency is to root out every possible extraneous factor such that we have a "decision tree" for every option. While this may seem ideal and perhaps proactive, it misses the fact that no amount of planning prevents the whimsy and unexpected from happening. This shouldn’t be a crippling issue; rather, it means we need to replace our grasp of the hierarchy of what we can and can’t control. For instance, typically we would perceive ourselves as the captain of our souls and, as such, pulling all the strings to do our best with the circumstances at hand. The issue with this is that it removes our relationships with the authority that is out of our hands. This comes in three ways.
First: We unknowingly exclude the fact that there’s information we simply do not know. While we tend to idealize that we do accept this fact, the execution of such honesty is rarely as effective as we hope. The good news is that a simple frameshift of our reference point fixes this perspective. The way to begin noticing this is to accept the fact we can’t constantly be in control. We can’t logic ourselves into a definitive way to do this, but a start is to admit with confidence that this is the case. It will remove a lot of unnecessary pressure from us and those around us, and it begins to shift our relationship with and as authority back into a healthy balance.
Second: We see an authority figure set a poor example. It’s easy to point out flaws in others and how poor leadership creates a dissonance in the rest of the system, but it’s hard to notice these things in ourselves and how this could perpetuate the toxic system. The importance lies in getting back to the foundational elements of efficacy and motivation to lead. We have to be constantly aware that a strong part of leadership is found in self-sacrifice and dedication to both those above and under our authority.
Third: We refuse to alter our position as or under authority due to a lack of checks and balances. Remember the dedication to the other people who expect us to lead effectively. This refusal also makes it impossibly difficult to expect positive results from others' performance and critique if we lose sight of achieving unity through self-sacrifice and dedication to a bigger picture.
When we keep these areas in proper perspective of our relationship to authority, we will be able to support meaningful change in our understanding of leadership efficacy and support positive results for the future as leaders and human beings.
The key takeaways? You can let go of control, and be a more effective leader.
