The past few days, I’ve been thinking about “key sites of engagement” where a leader identity emerges (someone acts like a leader). And recently, I came across an article from the Harvard Business Review that a LinkedIn connection shared, titled “8 Ways Leaders Delegate Successfully”.
The authors cited a few studies evidencing the importance of delegating work – that it “increases productivity, morale, and commitment, all of which impact company culture”. Further, the authors also cite a 2015 Gallup study consisting of 143 CEOs on the Inc. 500 that showed “companies run by executives who effectively delegate authority grow faster, generate more revenue, and create more jobs”. In order to tackle complex problems (cf. complicated), leaders are recognizing the importance of distributing the work load. In other words, instead of having one person find and attempt possible solutions, a leader should recognize more heads are better than one.
This “more heads are better than one” concept lends itself to the importance of recognizing diversity of thought (and diversity) as a solid business practice for finding a range of ideas for challenging complex problems where there isn’t a single solution. In a workplace environment with diverse teams, leaders are equipped with a variety of lenses to look at a problem because diversity is a force multiplier.
From a linguistics standpoint, a balanced and diverse team is usually equipped with a wider range of communicative behaviors which (research has found) often leads to egalitarian working relationships characterized by mutual support.
Where the “8 Ways Leaders Delegate Successfully” falls short is the “How Leaders Delegate Successfully” which I believe can be investigated through linguistic approaches.
Judith Baxter, a linguist who investigated the language of leadership, in her 2015 study observed how a leader emerged in three different teams challenged with the same problem – building a paper tower that would judged on height, stability (strength), and aesthetics . One team was composed of all men. A second team was composed only of women. The third team was composed of a balance of women and men.
Baxter found the participants relied on gendered discourse, ways of talking associated with perceptions of masculinity and femininity, in all teams. The team of men demonstrated competitive characteristics resulting in a hierarchal structure. The team of women demonstrated both competitive and egalitarian characteristics. The third team with both men and women crossed the gendered discourse boundaries. In other words, the men at times were consultative while the women were more assertive. In the end, the third team completed the challenge successfully which was attributed to the emergence of different but equal roles dedicated to the different judging criteria. Thus, as stated above, the third team not only demonstrated a wider ranger of communicative behaviors but also created different roles (instead of a single leader) to focus on the different judging criteria.
As Baxter demonstrates with her study, linguistic approaches are fine-grained analyses of language in use in various communicative contexts. “Words matter” and being cognizant of “how” we use words (and language) can help us be better leaders and create positive workplace environments.
