ROLE MODELS
Young leaders are inspired to
mimic the behavior of present-day CEOs says IE Business School's Margarita Mayo
A generational shift has
reinforced the authentic personal nature of CEO power. New generation employees
wish to participate in the decision-making of the company and want to see the
social impact of their work. Millennials (born 1980-2000) demand participation
and meaningful work from their leaders. If you're a CEO looking for success
with the new workforce, you'd better provide more than a paycheck.
Laura Guillen and
Konstantin Korotov, professors at ESMT, and I recently conducted several
studies published in the Leadership Quarterly showing how managers use their
leaders as role models.Participants indicated the leader who had been the most
significant to them in the past or in the present as their role model.They
described this individual with ten statements and evaluated how well each of
the statements matched their own characteristics. Some of these descriptions
were: “encourages people to grown“ or “charismatic.“ We found that the more
managers shared the leadership characteristics of their role models, the more
confident they felt in applying for leadership positions and the greater their
desire to lead in an authentic manner.
Some CEOs might wonder
whether focusing on their authenticity and personal power will make them
vulnerable, and ask whether they will end up losing their formal power.The
surprising truth is that authenticity makes a CEO more powerful. Authenticity
comes from the Greek word “autoridad“ control and being agent of your own
destiny.People trust a CEO who they see as authentic and in touch with his or
her inner values. More than that, authenticity means acting in a way that is
consistent with those values to gain the trust and respect of people.
To build authentic personal
power, CEOs need to change the way they relate to employees. The usual focus is
on transactional relationships. To achieve authentic personal power however,
CEOs need to develop meaningful and charismatic relationships.They need to go
further and build social capital around charisma. Research shows that when the
CEO is imbued with charismatic qualities, followers display greater motivation
to go the extra mile and perform beyond expectations.
To achieve authentic power
it's not enough to be imbued with CEO charisma. If CEOs don't make it clear
that they behave in the best interests of the organisation, they end up
overlooking their power. A CEO should be able to find authenticity beyond the limits
of his or her own existence to pursue solidarity.Being greater than themselves
makes leaders more authentic.
ET30DEC15
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