In the professional environment, the role we occupy can easily lead us to reactive behaviors. If the situation becomes tense, we may distance ourselves from others, or even criticize what others do or fail to do, with the aim of successfully navigating a setback.
It's also human to want to please others so they see I'm doing my job well and validate me as the great professional I aspire to be. We can even fall into patterns of excessive self-demand to achieve high levels of quality that will increase the recognition we receive.
All these reactive behaviors are not without purpose; we don't do them arbitrarily. They all have an objective: to maintain the reputation of the role we occupy in the system.
In trying to be productive, fulfill our responsibilities, and respond to the demands of the professional environment, we can fall into the trap of excessively identifying with the role we occupy, or of dedicating ourselves primarily to defending our own (those in our area or department).
When this happens, it's very easy to lose perspective and vision regarding the larger system to which that role belongs. This is why, when a manager is asked which team is their priority, their answer is usually the team that reports to them, instead of placing their peers, at least on the same level.
When someone identifies excessively with their role, they only see the system that represents them. Therefore, the role becomes the voice and advocate of that small system, and begins to defend only that part.
I often work with management teams where members are dedicating a great deal of energy to defending the reputation of their roles. When this happens, it's difficult for them to create a climate of co-creation and cross-functional leadership, since their mindset is focused on doing as much good as possible in their respective functions, even with the best of intentions.
In doing so, they forget that their role as a manager, apart from having the function of guaranteeing the tasks and duties they have to carry out, also has the responsibility of being a membrane that integrates different systems of the organization.
Any organizational role that, in its execution, becomes disconnected from the various roles within the company, must be readjusted.
Because often it is not only the person occupying the role who is responsible for this mismatch, but the organization has caused this imbalance by allowing and fostering (even if less consciously) an organizational culture in which roles compete with each other and need to defend themselves against one another.
To avoid this, management teams must integrate shared responsibility into the performance of all roles. In other words, each role within a management team must also have the responsibility to facilitate the performance of the other roles.
It is a contradiction to defend what is mine-local, understood as my area, if I do not defend what is mine-global, understood as the whole of the organization.
So the great challenge for any organizational leader in a management position is to become that membrane that represents a hybrid between the specific responsibility of the area and the responsibility to work to make things easier for other roles.
To achieve this, those in leadership roles must learn to respect the power that role grants them in a sustainable way. This means not abusing it if, in exercising it, we prevent other roles from exercising their power. But neither can we underutilize the power the role bestows upon us by becoming overly accommodating to others in order to avoid problems.
It is necessary to create a "nourishing fire" between the roles, understood as that "creative tension" necessary to set the limits that the roles need to fulfill their function, promoting constructive conflicts with other roles to seek a better local and global version.
When there is no nourishing fire, there can be a toxic fire, as a relentless struggle arises between the different roles within the management team, generating distrust and mutual distance. They thus become autonomous fighters, disconnected from one another, pursuing individual productivity and, in doing so, diminishing organizational productivity.
Apart from that nourishing fire and that toxic fire, there can also be absent fire, which occurs when there is a tacit non-aggression pact, where each role does not want to interfere or inconvenience the other roles so that they can do their job.
When this absence of constructive conflict is integrated into the system, the power of collective leadership diminishes, making each achievement attained by these roles independently increasingly difficult to attain, as they encounter more latent resistance around them.
Maintaining the reputation of the role is good, it's necessary, it's the duty of the person who holds it. But it's also important to understand that it's interconnected with the other roles in the organization, especially within the management team. And that, therefore, any team should foster dynamics that make things easier for everyone.
People who are part of a management team must understand that, for the good of the organization's future, productivity should not depend solely on the role, but rather on the team.
Contact us if you want to promote collective leadership within your organization.
Enric Arola
