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mackenzian

Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

authority

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Never annoy the secretary

The people who really run organizations are usually several levels down, where it's still possible to get things done. —Terry Pratchett

The PG version of one of my favorite pieces of life advice is “Never annoy the secretary.”

It’s from the days when office administrators and managers were rather known as “secretaries,” and hapless visitors underestimated just how essential these staff members were to the smooth functioning of the office. Distracted by the glitter and shine of class, rank, and conventional authority, someone might learn how easily paperwork can go astray, how variably messages can reach their intended recipients if left unshepherded, and how important it is to acknowledge others’ full humanity no matter where they sit around the organizational table.

The recent 1960s nostalgic series Mad Men includes several moments where the secretarial pool exercises its power from below over executives—almost all men—who assume that their formal titles and conventional authority mean that what actually happens in their world is up to them.

I’ve been fascinated by these power dynamics for years. Perhaps what started my curiosity was watching majority-female congregations being run by men who kept voting to exclude women from the highest formal roles in their tradition. Yet major actions in those congregations didn’t happen without the buy-in of the older women in the community, some of whom were eventually endorsed as elders.

Native people are maintaining their socio-political and spiritual resistance to the powers that have been destroying them since the 15th Century. Women are marching, and scientists and LGBTQ people now plan to do the same. In this climate, business as usual seems impossible because those without conventional power are simply too fed up to permit it.

The national park service social media teams (and those writing in their name), and EPA staff with them, are all responding to new White House restrictions with much more passion and concern than I would have predicted even a week ago. And, even if the probabilities aren’t ours, I can’t help but hope that this energy means that ordinary people “several levels down” from the new president and his administration are about to get good things done.

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Leadership means accepting authority

Look at the relationship between the English words authority and author. It’s almost as if this language conspired to remind us that authority is about intrinsic power to write one’s way into new realities, interpretations, and ways of being.

Authority: Origin (Latin) auctor - originator, promoter > (Latin) auctoritas > (Old French) autorite [and] (English) author > (Middle English) authority
Etymology chart via Google and Douglas Harper.
What I didn’t know until recently is that there’s also an etymological relationship between author and authentic. To be authentic means to be real and genuine; authentic also implies the first instance, source, or origin of a thing. No imitation. No down-the-assembly-line model. The authentic instance is the original.

Leaders don’t necessarily invent: we don’t all need to become an Edison or a Walker. As leaders, we do get to cultivate the prime instance of an approach or experience. Whether we create something entirely new or redevelop something old in unique ways, the one thing we’re sure to have authority over is ourselves.

Who teaches the acorn that it’s allowed to grow into an oak tree? Who approves the transition of the panther cub into an adult big cat? Who gives you permission to write, or design, or make music, or launch a business? While there’s bureaucracy in registering companies or publishing books and music, there’s no bureaucracy involved in you accepting yourself and whatever it is that you uniquely bring into the world.

There’s no need for you to seek permission or approval for whatever you are or will become. It’s not a matter of consensus.

How you work with others given who you are is a matter of consensus and respectful negotiation. But who you are is not.

Sometimes we ask for peer permission to do things we know we’re called to do. It seems humble and deferential but it’s more often a way to delay and deny our own truth. It’s a stalling tactic, and it’s also extremely effective!

Should others encourage us despite our own resistance, we can play coy and dismiss them. If others mirror our resistance and discourage us, we can treat their doubt as fact.  Either way we get to dissociate from what we know and we externalize the authority we already have to make it real.

This can go on for our whole lives if we want it to: we have the authority to do that. The good news is that we also have the authority to give up the game whenever we’re ready.

Nothing’s as unnerving as a forerunner who isn’t sure they wish to race, and nothing more compelling than a leader who has committed to becoming themselves and therefore can support you in your own personal and professional unfolding.