The four questions you need to ask if you want to get on the team
People want power not to be a master over others, but to be master of their own domain, to control their own fate, writes John Connolly.
21 February 2020
What do most employees in banks really want? In research done before the banking royal commission a significant number of bank staff working outside the head office said their ambition was to work in HQ. “Then you’d really know what was going on, you’d really be able to make a difference.”
It’s the same for the C-suite or the executive leadership team or the management committee or whatever they call the top team at your place. It seems most people outside the C-suite spend their time working out ways to get on the team, to get the team to listen to them or just to get in the close vicinity.
‘People want power not to be a master over others, but to be master of their own domain, to control their own fate’
So, what is it about power — apart from it being the ultimate aphrodisiac as Henry Kissinger rightly said? A recent study, “To have control over or to be free from others? The desire for power reflects a need for autonomy”, by European and US researchers showed that “people want power not to be a master over others, but to be master of their own domain, to control their own fate”. In other words, they want to be able to do what they like.
The study argues: “It is easy to think of examples of powerful individuals who seemingly desired influence and to control others, either in the past (Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon), in the present (Obama, Putin), or in fiction (Darth Vader in Star Wars or Tolkien’s Sauron). In contrast, the sense of autonomy of these powerful individuals is not as visible: it is reflected in the absence of constraint, plans not being thwarted and ambitions not being frustrated — an absence which remains unobserved.
But given many leaders, particularly men, are narcissists who want to control others, it’s important to be able to spot the difference if you want to be a C-suiter. Now, that’s not to say narcissists are not evil, destructive leaders spending most of their time protecting their fragile self-esteem, a self-esteem vulnerable to the slightest criticism. But quite a few of these narcissists actually do a really good job. So, if the chief executive and members of his or her top team are not all that mentally healthy, you’re going to have to play into that game. Already you can see that there’s a price to pay, some sacrifices to make, to get the key to top team nirvana.
Over the next few months we’ll look at what really goes on in the C-suite and how best to position yourself. Let’s start with four questions:
What do I want to be in five to 10 years?
Where do I want to be geographically in five to 10 years? (Melbourne, New York, London, Wollongong?)
What’s it going to cost to get there? Not financially, but how much of my values, life, family am I prepared to sacrifice?
OK, given the answers to the top three, is being a C-suiter worth it?
Despite what organisations say in their HR guides, the answer to question four is tougher for a woman. For instance, a 2018 Canadian study, “The unintended consequences of maternity leaves”, reported in the Harvard Business Review shows that “women who decide to take a longer time off can expect to pay a price for their commitment to motherhood when they return to work”. And that evidence from a variety of countries reveals that the longer new mothers are away from paid work, the less likely they are to be promoted, move into management, or receive a pay rise once their leave is over. They are also at greater risk of being fired or demoted. Length of leave can be a factor in the perceptions of co-workers as well — women who take longer leaves are often seen as less committed to their jobs than women who take much shorter leaves.
Men would suffer the same issues in taking paternity leave although “even when parental leaves are offered to both parents to share, women tend to take the vast majority of that time”, the study reports. The reality is that, consciously or unconsciously, maternity leave length is a surrogate indicator of women’s ability and commitment to the job. “In turn, this undermines perceptions of women’s perceived suitability for leadership roles,” the study argues.
One approach that helps in the issues around full parental leave is what the researchers call “keep-in-touch” programs. These “allow parents on leave to stay in contact with their workplace and colleagues while they are away” by pairing the parent with a co-worker who can keep them updated on their projects and clients. In an experiment “we found that female applicants who took a 12-month maternity leave were perceived as more agentic, committed to their jobs, and ultimately hireable, when a ‘keep-in-touch’ program was used. It should be noted that it is not enough for these programs to simply exist; these positive outcomes only occurred when women were making active use of them”.
This article first appeared in the February 2020 issue of The Deal