Are All Superiors Leaders?

Much has been researched, written, read and taught about leadership and authority. Experts have classified leadership depending on the approach adopted. Types of leadership and levels of authority enjoyed notwithstanding, everyone, including those at the very end of the chain wish to rise in hierarchy. Inevitably everyone, in due course, gets to be entrusted positionally with authority. While methodology of exercising authority is personality driven, effectiveness of leadership depends on how subordinates receives it.

Superiors, irrespective of realm and reach, yearn for unquestioned acceptance, wholehearted adherence, enthusiastic compliance and unfathomable respect. But, history bears testimony to the fact that different individuals occupying the same position of authority over the same chain, evoke dissimilar responses in terms of acceptance, adherence, compliance, relevance and reverence.

Are all superiors leaders?

Superiors

Since functional hierarchy is unavoidable for an organisation’s survival, everyone in the chain would either be superior or subordinate to someone else in the chain. Simplistically put, anyone ahead in the chain of hierarchy becomes superior and those below subordinate. Anybody, regardless of personal qualities, can become a superior in the chain of hierarchy and superiors enjoy ‘positional authority’. In order to ensure viability of the hierarchy, legal obligations on adherence to directions of superiors are invariably built into the system. Transgression of positional authority thus risks liabilities and creation of obstacles to one’s forward movement within the hierarchy.

Leaders

Leadership is all about people, their values and aspirational goals. It is the noncoercive ability of an individual to compel or motivate those around him to accept his ideology and perception so as to synergise their thought and action in convergence with his. It is a ‘soft power’ that an individual wields over others. There is something in a leader that evokes the nature of subordination witnessed. Scholars often attribute it to charisma. Real leadership charisma comes through competency and ability to irrefutably place others’ interests much before one’s own.

Human beings, though social, are selfish in nature. People willingly surrender autonomy of their thought and action to another individual only when their individual aspirations are really or seemingly furthered, even if it is in the long term. Individuals become leaders when others, individually and collectively, continually transfer autonomy of thought and action to that individual. An individual capable of motivating those around him to willingly surrender autonomy of thoughts and accept the resultant agentic state commands authority of leadership.

Authority

Authority is the ‘right’ of an individual to exercise powers conferred upon him and enforce compliance of his directions by those placed under him. Hierarchical and constitutional positions come with prescribed authority and everyone subordinate to such authority is normally aware of the limits of such authority.

There are instances of individuals, normally referred to as despots, wielding unlimited authority. Though propaganda machines endlessly hail them as great leaders, they are not. They subordinate masses through repressive regimes. Such subordination ceases when kernels of dissent, over time, become storms of resistance that blows away oppression.

Positional authority enjoyed by superiors dictates and demands allegiance and adherence. However, superiors’ area of influence remains restricted to functional and geographical limits prescribed by the organisational structure. Subordinates eventually accept positional authority only where such position is of relevance and only as long as it suits their interests.

Authority that stems from leadership transcends positional authority and breaks organisational barriers. Unlike the authority granted by position, authority from leadership is normally conferred by the very same people who have invested their faith and allegiance to that individual's leadership. Authority wielded by a leader is personal, voluntarily ceded by followers and therefore the least resented. Authority inherent to leadership that evokes willing subordination of the masses is sublimely different. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela are glowing examples where masses willingly accepted agentic state granting them unassailable authority. Even adversaries had to cede ground.

The Choice: Superior or Leader?

Modern markets do not offer much space and time for experimentation. Cost of investments that bleed organisations and uncertainty of market dynamics necessitate ruthless policies to push up bottom lines, decimate competitors and reap profits, fastest and earliest. HR assets, for most managements, happen to be just another element of the complex matrix, that must be exploited towards profitability.

Faced with unnerving turbulence, organisations opt to pack its hierarchy with ‘superiors’ known to set stiff targets and flog their team to achieve the impossible. They don't hesitate even to poach even from their own competitors. These individuals, focused on devising means, right or wrong, to manoeuvre earnings, may through stick and carrot elicit compliance and adherence. But they are the least of leaders. They may succeed, short term, but they inspire neither their subordinates nor superiors. Sooner than later, they lose out to smarter ones who device faster, meaner methods to push up bottom lines.  Attrition, of the team they work in and of themselves, normally consumes this breed. They impede organisational growth.

Leaders on the other hand command allegiance of those around, eliciting performances beyond what even their followers think they are capable of.  They forge unity within the team and instill a strong sense of belonging. It does not mean that ‘leaders’ cannot be aggressive and will not be able to achieve short-term targets. With every follower, considering himself a stakeholder for success or failure, probability of success far outweighs that of a failure. Success under a leader lasts longer for an organisation than the gains made by a flogging superior. 

Organisations are faceless, deaf, dumb and mute entities.  Life, nature and culture of an organisation comes from its people. It makes good business sense to staff organisations with people for whom success of the organisation is seen as their own.

Leaders alone can make that happen. It makes sense to invest in grooming leaders rather than creating superiors.

POWERING POINTS OF VIEW

The Inevitable Act

There would be no manager or executive of consequence, who would not have given a PowerPoint presentation or sat through a few. Presentations, frills attached, is now a way of life and inevitable to effective sharing of information, as bullets, charts, graphs and audio video visuals. Anything possible could be improvised and incorporated to make presentations impressive. Despite all that, most merely remain visuals and seldom achieve purposes intended.  When presentations are contests to win situations, where only one can win, success normally graces, not the most spectacular but the most influencing.

Winners

The Internet is teeming with experts and their recipes that guarantee great presentations.  Most of them offer techniques to make screens look better and more attractive. Blazing screens alone, unfortunately, don’t guarantee success in favourably influencing the audience. Without a clear understanding of the means to effectively influence decision-makers, presentations remain purposeless histrionics. Contrary to common belief, it is not the quality of slides, but the ‘power’ of the ‘point of logic’ and its ability to draw audience towards the ‘thought process’ advocated, that wins the day. The key lies in influencing decision makers individually and collectively to agree with the logic advocated or convincing the audience to accept the point of view presented. Skillfully used presentations can help logically reason out adoption of one amongst many viable alternatives and objectively compare parameters. It can help motivate and compel teams to accept, adopt and adhere to new ideas. Presentations are means to be exploited and not the end.

Common Practice

It’s common to hear senior executives say “I have an important presentation to make”. Importance of the event, notwithstanding, the misplaced focus is too obvious to be missed. Energy and efforts go into piling up of as much information as possible and converting them to a series of slides. More often than not, presenters flash these slides, read it out verbatim and state the obvious from graphs, charts or tables. Its common to see presenters running short of time, skipping slides and audience disengaging themselves from the presentation.

While it may be necessary to ‘read out’ slides for people who can't read, business meetings are normally attended by lettered people with basic sense of size and proportion. They can, without outside help, read slides, decipher charts and compare crests or troughs of a line graph.  Stating the obvious to such an audience relegates the presenter to being an announcer. Such presentations help collate and present information for attendees to reason out in the manner they want to, with no role for the presenter. Presentations devoid of a cogent thought process seldom influence decision makers.

The Technique

There cannot be a prescribed method of presentation.  Each one must be unique, the uniqueness characteristic of the presenter and his style of putting across the narrative.

Irrespective of the nature of presentation, the presenter must be aware of its aim. He must know the target audience, competitors, adversaries, influencers and decision makers. The decision of how the narrative must flow would be dependent on this knowledge.

Slides must be designed such that the presenter becomes the source of possible inferences. Such slides incite the audience to focus on what the speaker says rather than ignoring him as an appendage to colourful displays. Too many colours and fancy transitions fritter focus away from the subject and the presenter. Much like designing a conveyor belt, presenter must first decide the path of discourse he wants to lead the audience on. Counters likely, must be intelligently positioned and adequately addressed to liquidate opposing thoughts. Facts and figures must be sequenced such that it strengthens the logic presented. Presentation must be a narrative woven by the presenter compelling enough to, dispel doubts, quell opposition, shape opinions favourably and elicit decisions as desired.

Time, is an issue that most presenters tend to disrespect. Human brains can continuously be engaged only for a limited duration. It may be worthwhile to plan presentations to finish within 20 minutes. If the subject demands longer interaction, presentations must be interspersed with activities like ‘question-answer’ sessions to keep the audience interactively engaged. Most attendees mentally prepare themselves to accommodate presentations as per the time slots given. Exceeding time slots automatically erode effectiveness of the presentation. Thus, when an audience is told that the presentation is for 30 minutes, it will be worthwhile to conclude it in 30 minutes.  Every minute ahead of it, however, absorbing the presentation may be, generally works against it. 

Fundamentals

In order to ensure effective presentations, it is mandatory to answer the following: -

What is the presentation about?

What is expected out of it? (What do I want to achieve from it?)

Who are the attendees?

Who are the influencers?

Who is the decision maker?

Influencing decision maker(s)

What is the prevailing thought process?

Is it in line with or contrary to the line of thought being advanced?

What is the logic appropriate to address the differential?

How do I lead the audience in the direction I want?

How do I sequence the argument or information flow to get the maximum impact?

How do I pack all the punch in the time given?

How do I elicit the decision I want?

Conclusion

Most movies have a hero, a heroine and a plot that finally unites them. Some become super hit at the box office while others bomb miserably. The difference between the two lies not in the narrative but in the manner of narration. So is it, with PowerPoint presentations.