Practical Coach: Management Skills for Everyday Life, The

Authority Relations at Work

Despite all the talk about flattened organizations, participative management, and empowerment, hierarchy is alive and well in most work organizations today. Indeed, one of the most important lessons that effective managers learn is that their everyday behaviors get interpreted “through the lens of authority relations.”^[8] In other words, our assumptions about boss-subordinate relationships influence what (and who) we pay attention to, how we interpret what we attend to, and how we behave toward others. We develop our attitudes toward authority in at least two ways: our place in the organizational structure (for example, whether we are in a boss or subordinate role at work) and our personality (for example, the attitudes ...