The Recipe for A+ Leadership: authority + access

The moment you take on a leadership position, you are granted two unique powers: AUTHORITY and ACCESS. How you utilize each will define your leadership style.

For many, leadership is about the power of authority, which means 'the right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.' Read the job description for any management position and likely you'll find a variation of each of those three:

• Give orders can be translated to 'Direct a team'
• Make decisions -> 'Define the strategy'
• Enforce obedience -> 'Hold the team accountable'

While authority is and should be an aspect of any leadership profile, when left on its own, the role becomes more ruling than it is leading.

Enter ACCESS

The counter balance for an effective leadership pendulum comes with access, which is 'to obtain, examine, or retrieve' (verb) as well as a 'means of approaching or entering a place' (noun).

In the leadership, access is two-fold:

• Access to your people
• Access to other resources within the business.

Any experienced leader knows the heavy burden which access to their people carries. As you enter their world, you'll get to know their goals and you'll be exposed to their limitations. You'll know their strengths but you'll be accountable to addressing their weaknesses. You'll get to know the person behind the professional and the people at home that they (and by proxy, you) are responsible for.

So while you have authority over others, it is your access to others that should inform your decision making.

Part of this is taking advantage of your access to other resources within the business. What information is at your fingertips that isn't available to your people? It could be product roadmap, market intelligence, internal SMEs, etc. You'll never have a perfect team; there will be holes. It's your responsibility as a leader to fill in those gaps and unlock doors that can lead to your team's success.

In action, it's about asking questions like:

• Have I taken advantage of my access to information and people prior to making this critical business decision? If not, what have I overlooked?
• Based on what I know about the strengths and gaps of my team, what support or upskilling can I anticipate will be needed in order to execute on our strategy?
• Thinking of the unique values, drivers, and needs of my people, is our reward system aligned? If not, how can we evolve it in order to maintain the motivations of my people?

The moment you take on a leadership position, you are granted two unique powers: AUTHORITY and ACCESS. A+ Leadership is about mastering the merger of the two. The best part though is that when applying this type of thought process in public, you are demonstrating to your people that your decisiveness is only bested by your humanness.

Your reward?

A reputation as AUTHORITATIVE, which is defined as 'able to be trusted as being accurate, true, and reliable'.

Is that you?

-Sam

As always, I'm here to support you along your career and leadership journey. Connect with me to let me know how I can support you