Because I Said So: The Wrong Approach to Leadership - Guest Post by Michael Rogovin

I have a friend who is a coach for a little league baseball team and laments that some parents were questioning why he insisted that players show up a half-hour before game time. “I have to treat the parents like children,” he said, “I’m the coach and I said so! Any more stupid questions? They would never question a school drama teacher who told the students actors to arrive a half hour before curtain-time, so why is this any different?” I suppose his reaction might be a perfectly reasonable response, depending on what it is intended to accomplish.

If his goal is to teach unquestioned obedience to authority, then perhaps that is a good start. This is the approach taken in army basic training, where the goal is to teach following orders as one of the highest values. Of course, blind obedience to superiors has its limits, even in the military (as Pete Seeger demonstrated so wonderfully in his classic “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” [watch it here] and on a more extreme level, the so-called "Nuremberg Defense" of "just following orders"). I don't think that this is the best model for leadership. Besides, don’t we want to teach our children a healthy skepticism of authority (so long as questioning authority is always done appropriately in manner and time; it is not wise to challenge the authority of the police officer that pulled you over; those scenarios rarely end well even if you were, in fact, in the right).

Like parents, coaches need to have authority. But whence comes authority? Is it from fear and intimidation, or respect? If one seeks to assert authority using one of the first two, or to simply silence critics, make them feel stupid, escalate a situation or build up one’s own sense of control, then by all means use the “I said so” approach. But I doubt it will be effective in the long run.

On the other hand, if the goal of asserting leadership is in order to accomplish a task properly, then authority based on respect is a better model. Respect does not come built-in with the job (except perhaps for elected officials, but even there, the respect is for the office, not necessarily the office holder). One earns respect when one conveys that they have knowledge and are reasonable, this leads to trust, and trust leads to respect for the authority (“wow, she really knows what she is doing”), and that can lead to compliance with reasonable requests without much argument.

Besides, sometimes people just don’t think things through the way they should. So questioning a decision may not be a challenge, but a quest for understanding. One can respond by reinforcing the questioner’s ignorance and escalating conflict, or by ignoring the motivation of the questioner, and simply educating the person about the need for the rule. If done simply and without anger, this can defuse any conflict, and reinforce the leader’s role as an authority.
This approach to authority can be applied equally to coaching baseball, parenting, and the workplace. Too often, people with authority are combative and defensive. They don’t like their authority questioned; perhaps they are unsure how much authority they really have, but I don’t want to analyze them. The best leaders in organizations exude authority because people respect their expertise and trust them. They are demanding, but reasonable, and are not afraid to explain why they do things. They listen to criticism and see every interaction as an opportunity to educate and build support for initiatives, and to subtly reinforce why they are the leader in the first place.

About the Author:
Michael Rogovin has 20 years of hands-on executive management experience in the government, education, not-for-profit, and legal sectors with an emphasis in strategic visioning and planning, budgets and performance, operations, human resources, information technology and environmental sustainability. Michael can be reached at mrogovin118@gmail.com.