Legitimate Agreement and Highly Productive Teams by Dalmo Cirne

Leaders want to be successful, and success is directly correlated with their teams’ effectiveness and output, so a perennial problem lives in the minds of leaders and managers, “how to keep teams engaged and productive?” Engaged with the company and its mission, and productive in making continuous progress toward that goal.

In his 1762 book, The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes about establishing legitimate authority. He argues that powers that are coercive, dictatorial, or forceful are illegitimate and may only impose temporary compliance, since people only feel compelled to follow bona fide authority.

Rousseau states that legitimate authority is consented, that it is achieved via a social contract where there is an agreement to trade some agency in exchange for the preservation and protection of the remaining rights and the social order.

The terms of the agreement, however, are paramount. They must not be unilateral where the gains of one group come at the expense of others (“wholly to your expense and wholly to my advantage”), that would be indistinguishable from using force.

Good leadership and management are subject to the same principles from The Social Contract. Legitimate leadership comes from clear communication of intent (why) and an agreement on what needs to be done, a timeline (when), and how to do it.

There are cases of “leaders” who manage with perceived threats to fire, demote, or enact other forms of punishment; often they have a short wick, are embedded into office politics, lack care about context, rule with an iron-fist, or like to tell everyone what to do. Leading is vastly different from subduing–however it is mistaken for by some.

Compliance to such leaders will only be temporary and mostly due to self-preservation. The team will not engage voluntarily, refuse to own the product, or align with the mission. Moreover, at the first opportunity, an inevitable talent exodus from the team or the company.

When to establish an agreement?

The best time to establish the legitimate leadership agreement is at the beginning of a company, a project, a milestone. The second-best time is right now. There is no such a thing as too late to legitimize leadership. The only things preventing it from happening are an inflated ego, false sense of prestige, or misconceived superiority.

The agreement is not a formal ceremony or ritual of sorts. It is an open conversation with the team where a leader shares intent. It can be as simple as “Folks, we have a challenge before us. Customers want to use our product, but they have an existing system and don’t want to replace it. We believe our best strategy is to offer an API for product XYZ to integrate with external services.”

By understanding why to invest time and effort, the team can align themselves with the intent, and a sense of product ownership follows.

How to implement the agreement?

With intent understood, tell people on the team the reasons you need them onboard with you and how they will make a difference.

Continuing the conversation with the team “Our product can be stand alone, but it can also be integrated with other systems. It is better to serve customers in some capacity than to not serve them at all. By implementing this API, we will be able to not only help this customer, but also add a new way for us to address the market.”

Validate alignment and engagement

Legitimizing a leadership agreement is just the first step; you need to continue walking the walk. Engagement and progress need to be monitored and adjusted as needed.

Track the progress of the project against a timeline, learn from the team what is realistic to be completed, tweak scope to reflect what was learned along the way.

Those are just a few of the things will need to do, there is no recipe for doing A then B followed by C and voilà, success. Stay focused on making progress toward the goal.

Adopt a culture of criticism

For the purposes of establishing a legitimate agreement, a culture of criticism can be defined as one where members feel free to provide feedback without concern for retaliation.

Without criticism, you would not have the needed feedback to assess whether what is being done is on the right track. Without this essential signal, the natural tendency for us, humans, is just to assume that everything is just fine.

Encourage your team to give feedback. Listen to them and consider their inputs. This is not management by consensus but acknowledging that feedback is a necessary condition for being effective. In the end the buck stops with you, and your goal is to get it right, not to be the one who is right.

Summary

The legitimate agreement for leadership is a solid foundation for engaged and productive organizations. It is obtained through fair trade of responsibilities between leaders and teams. From the agreement comes alignment, ownership, and output.

The people on your team are skilled and capable, include them in the why, what, when, and how. The results will speak for themselves.

Remain engaged, track progress, and accept criticism. Everyone’s goal is to build and deliver a successful product. Assess your readiness and motivations to be an effective manager. Are you prepared to be a successful leader? Take the Management Streams Questionnaire.

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