Borrowed Authority

Domain: Self Awareness - Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Almost all authority is borrowed.

What does that mean? It means that much of the influence we carry is not based on our abilities or core values, but because of external factors like who we know, our job and our education.

Borrowed authority is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, most people need to leverage borrowed authority on their path to building more credible earned authority.

The problem is that borrowed authority is so easy to use, that it disincentivizes many from developing it into actual or earned authority. That creates a risk because authority that is strictly borrowed can disappear or be taken away from you in an instant.

In fact, there are two questions I like to use when determining whether authority is borrowed or earned…

First, does the value of your authority reside within you or an external source?

Second, can the authority be taken away from you?

Those questions seem similar, but there are some nuances to consider as we make the transition from borrowed to earned authority. Today, we'll discuss some common examples of borrowed authority in order to help illustrate the point. This transition takes time and I'll cover strategies for developing more earned authority at a later date.

Keep in mind that there are some valid and positive uses of borrowed authority in many of these examples. Instead of making the case against borrowed authority, I'm recommending that leaders be aware of when and how they are leveraging it.

In all things, balance.

Titles

Your title is the most common form of borrowed authority. This is especially true if you are a manager or executive.

Your job title is exclusively borrowed authority because it fails both questions. The authority of the position is tied to the title and it can be easily lost if you are fired or quit. In fact, if those things happen, someone else will come behind you to fill the role and inherit that same authority. That's because the authority rests with the position and not the individual.

The argument to this is that you need to be qualified to hold these positions. There are a lot of highly qualified managers and executives who hold real authority outside of their job title. That's what we all want to see. But there are just as many leaders whose authority primarily relies on the role itself.

As a leader, positional authority is the cheapest and least effective form. I always recommend developing strong working relationships and managerial expertise to build lasting influence. Individual subject matter experts demonstrate this point beautifully, as they're regularly delivering results without the formal leadership title.

Credentials

Credentials, such as certifications or degrees can also be a form of borrowed authority but this one is a little trickier.

If you graduate college, you come into the workforce with very little experience. At that point, you are leveraging the borrowed authority of your degree to get a role. Recruiters and hiring managers know you are a risk because most of your knowledge is theoretical; however, the credentials represent a form of training that is sufficient to address that risk.

Depending on what you went to school for, it's likely that someone else has the skill and experience for that same role but isn't given consideration due to degree requirements. In this scenario, the borrowed authority may actually supersede an established authority.

This is a known phenomenon in the professional world. In many cases, any degree is deemed sufficient…even if the degree is not in the field for which the role resides. The old joke of "C's get degrees" further suggests that completion of the credential is more valuable than the knowledge that is gained.

To be clear, there are plenty of roles that should absolutely require a degree and/or certification. But there are also roles where that is not the case and actual experience proves to be just as valuable. It's worth making the distinction for the roles on your team.

Organizations

This point overlaps with the last two. It's not just your title or your credentials, but also the organization they're associated with. For instance, many professional firms will hire predominantly from certain schools. There are also individuals who are quick to associate themselves with their alma mater as a competitive advantage. As the old joke goes: How do you know if someone went to Harvard? They will tell you.

But this also occurs within companies, industries and sectors. A great example of this is the non-profit sector. It takes considerable skill and talent to run a non-profit; however, many of these organizations struggle with pay and resource inequity based on biases held around the purpose and value of non-profit work. Dan Pallotta's TED Talk captures this beautifully.

There are material differences in running a small local business and a publicly traded international corporation. But as with your title, your association with your organization can be taken away from you. The question then becomes, are you building lasting influence based on your experiences within these organizations or are you just leveraging their name?

Name dropping

Much of what we've talked about so far is embedded in systems; however, we as individuals elect to leverage borrowed authority every day. This is most evident in the behavior known as "name dropping".

When you hear the phrase, you might think of the annoying person in the office who goes out of their way to mention that he was "at lunch with the CEO the other day". But name dropping happens in more frequent and subtle ways as well.

For instance, people routinely reference a senior leader's title when making a request. Such as "the VP of marketing asked me to check on the status of the launch".

When you do this, you are substituting someone else's authority for your own. One of the ways to build lasting influence for yourself is to actually avoid referencing external sources of authority for leverage unless absolutely necessary.

Referrals

The final example I'll include is referrals. This is a common and well-accepted form of borrowed authority. Whether a friend is recommending you to their company for an open position or you are connecting two personal connections for business, a referral leverages one person's personal knowledge and relationships for the benefits of another.

The phrase "it's who you know, not what you know" comes to mind here.

We're relationship-driven creatures and this is not likely to change. With that said, the dark side of this type of borrowed authority is well documented in examples of nepotism.

Here is a case for leveraging both forms of authority. Building a strong and robust network is a valuable thing to do, but it's just as important to be able to deliver on results once you're in the door using your earned authority. This is the difference between effective networking and the aforementioned nepotism.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please reply to this email.

If you are interested in exploring one-on-one coaching to transform your leadership, email me at [email protected] and we’ll coordinate a free, one-hour discovery session.

This week’s action items:

Think about your authority in each of these domains and write-down where you are leveraging borrowed authority vs. earned authority.
When in doubt, ask yourself whether your authority relies on an external source and whether it can be taken away from you.
In instances where you are relying on borrowed authority, what can you do to develop working relationships and positional expertise?