Welcome to this edition of YOUR PATH TO SUCCESS!
In yesterday’s post, we discussed four key concepts of true Leadership: Responsibility, Authority, Resources, & Accountability.
Today’s post deals with the second of these, Authority.
To be a successful leader, you need to know your Authority. Knowing who or what authorizes you to do something, and why you are authorized to do it, will allow you to successfully complete a given task.
For example, in reviewing your role as a parent, who or what authorizes you to fulfill the responsibilities of parenthood? Who or what authorizes you to feed and clothe your children and put a roof over their heads? To this, most parents would reply:
“They’re my children. Of course I’m going to provide for them!”
But have you really considered your authority here? Ask yourself how you know what to do to care for your children. Perhaps, you have learned from your parents how to care for a family. In this case, your parents have authorized you to provide for your children. As a good parent, you listen to your children in order to know what they need. In this case, your children have authorized you to do what is needed. Have you, at some point, taken courses in child development or child psychology? If so, these courses contribute to your authority as a parent.
Take a moment to list on your paper who or what authorizes you to fulfill your role as a parent. Be very thorough here. Doing so will increase your confidence that you can successfully raise your children into confident, happy, healthy individuals.
If we revisit your role as a mid – level manager (we touched on this in yesterday’s post), asking yourself who or what has authorized you gives you the authority to perform the responsibilities associated with your position. Who or what gives you the authority to train and supervise members of your staff? Obviously, upper management has authorized you to do this, but why? Perhaps, your special expertise in the topics to be trained has given you the authorization to fulfill this responsibility. Maybe you have worked for the company for a length of time that has enabled you to assume this authority, as well as authority for scheduling of the workforce and team development.
Go back to the roles you’ve previously explored. For each role, consider who or what authorizes you to accomplish the tasks associated with each responsibility of that role. Consider why you have been authorized. In doing so, you will come to understand why you are able to complete each task successfully. This will increase your success exponentially.
So far we’ve defined our Responsibility and realized our Authority on our journey along the Path To Power™.
In our next post, we’ll take a look at the next of our four key leadership concepts, Resources.
To Your Success!
KimAlyse
KimAlyse Popkave, M.Ed., CMI, CPPC
President
K.A. Popkave Coaching & Consulting
570-617-6608
kimalyse@popkave-coaching-and-consulting.com
www.popkave-coaching-and-consulting.com
