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.