All Articles Leadership Management Being in charge changes us. But probably not in the way you think

Being in charge changes us. But probably not in the way you think

Being in charge can feel good, but as Nik Kinley writes, it can also create a sense of isolation and amplify our weaknesses.

6 min read

LeadershipManagement

in charge

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The power that comes with being in charge can be a wonderful thing. It affords us the opportunity to make decisions, direct activity and have an impact across a broader scale. It can be beneficial for us, too, and not just financially. For starters, though being in charge can sometimes increase stress levels, in general, leaders tend to report being happier than the people who follow them. Being in charge also tends to make us feel better about ourselves, increasing our self-esteem and confidence and even leading people to have a more positive body image. So, being in charge can be good for us. But the power that comes with the responsibility of being the boss can also make doing the job much more difficult. 

How power affects us

Power seems to change how we think. On the one hand, it can boost our ability to think abstractly and improve our ability to ignore potentially distracting information, enabling us to be more decisive. But it also tends to increase our reliance on automatic processing, making us more likely to use stereotypes and more susceptible to subjective biases.

Power also changes our decision-making. Just the feeling of being in control makes people more likely to take risks and be entrepreneurial. But it also makes people less able to hear others’ opinions and more likely to be over-confident about their own judgments. So, people in charge are often more decisive and more willing to take risks, but the decisions they make aren’t necessarily better ones.

Having power also makes us more likely to take action to achieve goals  and more likely to persist in pursuing them. But the goals leaders pursue are usually the most salient ones, which can often mean short-term ones and sometimes personal ones.

Finally, power also changes how we interact with others. In particular, the power difference between leaders and their followers creates a psychological distance that makes them more likely to objectify these people and view them as resources and are less able to see things from their perspective or understand how they feel.

So, power may feel good, but the effects it has on us are often not for the better.

The three focal points of power

Important to note is that these are just the headlines. There are a myriad number of ways that power can affect us. So, how to make sense of it? Well, most of the effects of power are driven by three core things that power does to us:

  1. It increases the psychological distance between ourselves and the people we lead.
  2. It decreases openness and the flow of information to us.
  3. And it enhances the extent to which we are influenced by our internal states — by what we feel and think.

This last issue is critical, too. Because it means that people with power are more likely to act in accordance with their emotions, preferences, personalities, values and personal goals. And what that means, inevitably, is that power amplifies what is inside people.

This can be for the better, enhancing your strengths. But it can also magnify your weaknesses. So, if you’re prone to overconfidence, power will usually make you more so. If you’re susceptible to indecision, being in charge will often make this worse. And if you tend not to be empathetic, focusing on tasks more than people, then being the boss will typically only further impair your ability to connect with others.

Managing the effects of power

Understanding these three focal points is important because they are also the keys to better managing the impact power can have on us. Precisely what leaders need to do differs according to their personalities and capabilities. But there are three things all leaders should do.

  1. Mind the empathy gap. Because power increases the psychological distance between leaders and their direct reports, it makes understanding how the people who work for them feel more difficult. So, leaders need to make sure they focus on this. At the simplest level, this means routinely asking things like, “What do you think?” and “How do you feel about that?” It may not be rocket science, but the trick is to do it consistently and systematically in order to ensure you don’t lose sight of what’s going on for others.
  2. Persistently push openness. We all like to think people are open with us but we all tailor how we speak to our boss. In fact, creating openness is more challenging than it may sound because transparency is, in many ways, completely unnatural. As the joke goes, Anyone who is completely open is probably unemployed, single and friendless. So, creating openness is a bit like pushing water uphill — it’s tough, and it requires constant effort. This means persistently asking questions, praising people for input and not publicly criticizing people when they get things wrong because building openness is all about reducing people’s anxiety to speak up.
  3. Finally, leaders need to routinely sense-check their intuitive feelings and judgments. If you find yourself feeling confident about a decision, ask for input on why you shouldn’t make it. If you think it important to prioritize a particular goal, ask others for possible alternatives. Because the only way to manage the tendency of power to amplify what is within you is to seek balance, that doesn’t mean blunting your strengths or never being decisive. It just means taking a second to sense-check what you are doing and why you are doing it. The more power you have, the more likely your actions are to be informed not by objective data but by subjective impulses, biases and opinions.

Whether we recognize it or not, power does things to us. It can enhance our strengths, but it also tends to amplify our weaknesses. And because we are leaders, the aspects of ourselves that become amplified are inevitably cascaded onto the people who work for us, affecting their behavior and performance, too. We may not immediately see these effects, but they are there. The only thing up for debate is to what degree we take steps to understand them and better manage them.

Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.

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