Exceed Your Authority

April 6, 2010

From: Heifetz, R., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M., (2009).  The practice of adaptive leadership: tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world.  Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Thoughtfully exceed your authority.  The exercise of adaptive leadership is dangerous in part because you always dance on the edge of your scope of authority, at least with respect to some of your authorizers - whether they are your superiors, peers, subordinates, or people outside your organization.  You push the limits of what others think you ought to be doing.  You raise difficult issues that no one wants to discuss, or point out the gaps between people's espoused values and their actual behavior.
The need to go beyond what you are authorized to do, both formally and informally, is what distinguishes adaptive leadership from good management.  But it is tricky.  Your authorizers may experience you as subversive when you deliberately exceed your authority.  But unless you purposefully and carefully dance on the edge of your scope of authority and risk the pushback, you may never move your organization or community through adaptive change (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, p. 282).

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