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North Texas Community Consortium

Spring 2012 Leadership Convocation


Wright Lassiter, Jr., Chancellor,
Dallas County Community College District

UPWARD LEADERSHIP


As organizations face growing challenges there are tremendous pressures about
how to relate to each other without some of the structures created by the old
hierarchies. Some interesting insights are provided by Michael Useem, author of
Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win. In the book he talks
about how upward leadership impacts leaders and the people around them.

His definition of leading up is interesting. He states that upward leadership is
about taking charge when managers are not formally in charge. Rather than
undermining authority or seizing power from superiors, upward leadership means
stepping in when senior managers need help and support in ways that benefit
everyone.

Leading up is a matter of offering a superior your strategic insights or persuading
a boss to change directions before it is too late. It requires an ability to work in
two directions at once; of stepping into the breach when nobody above you is
doing so, and of listening to those below you before you step off a cliff yourself.

Downward leadership and upward leadership reinforce one another; if you are
effective at the former, it will encourage the latter. If you are adept at the latter, it
can inspire the former.

Obviously, leaders have to create an environment where people feel comfortable
challenging and giving input. The question becomes how can leaders do a
better job of creating such an environment? According to the author, two steps
can help build that right mind-set. First, if you expect those below to support
your leadership and step into the breach when needed, they will need to
understand your strategy, methods and rules. That requires repeated
restatements of your principles and consistent adherence to them.

Second, if you want subordinates to offer their best advice, you must value and
make use of it, and listen as well to what your subordinates are implying or
communicating through other means. Because the personal stake in you and the
company is large, they may appreciate your situation better than you do yourself.

Another cogent question is why is it important that organizations embrace this
idea of upward leadership? Well, to come forward when a superior does not
encourage it can be risky, but if the upward leadership works whether
welcomed or not it can help transform decline or growth and, occasionally turn
disaster into triumph.

Consider this example when upward leadership proved invaluable. When Meg
Whitman, the chief executive of eBay, was in Japan when the World Trade
Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, and her chief operating officer, Brian
Swette, was in Florida.

In their absence, eBays top team acted on its own. Its first priority: establish
that all 2,500 employees were alive and well (they were). The second priority:
secure its crown jewel, the eBay Web site (it did). Its third priority: create a way
for eBay to support the massive relief effort, and from this emerged eBays relief
initiative Auction for America. By the time I was able to call in from Japan,
said Ms. Whitman, our team was already thinking about and acting on the big
issues.

You know whats coming next: just food for thought colleagues.

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