Political Dilemmas at Work: How to Maintain Your Integrity and Further Your Career

Chapter Seventeen

THE STATUS TRAP

Your position carries high status that should enable you to get things done, yet you seem powerless to influence those below you.

 

 

 

 

High status can mean personal recognition, self-esteem, rich rewards, and the opportunity to make a difference. Higher status usually means greater power and influence, the chance to make important changes, and perhaps even leave a lasting legacy. Higher status gives us the scope to take decisions and make things happen and it is a natural human motivation to want to acquire it. Higher status is pretty hot stuff.

But status only provides the mandate, not necessarily the power. It gives us the formal permission but not necessarily the influence. In modern organizations, followers heavily influence the what, when, how, and where. What do we do when we find that status is not enough? And what do we do when we realize that we do not have the influence we expected or our status seems little more than a permission slip, which no one seems to acknowledge? How do we get out of the status trap?

The Status Trap Dilemma

On my way up, I was always hugely respectful of seniority and the status quo. Whenever any of my bosses asked me to do something, I would get right on it. It never occurred to me not to. So I am completely confused about why this same rule does not apply to the people who report to me.

I seem to be attempting to lead in a vacuum. It matters little what I say, people just seem to go off and do ...