Let's Talk About Authority

Table of Contents

• What is authority
• Utilizing authority
  • Autocratic leader
  • Democratic Leader
  • Passive leader
• Closing words

Hey, how is it going? Time surely flew; blink, and you will miss the majority of 2025. Hopefully, your body, mind, and soul are in a good condition. In this last post of the year, we are going to talk about authority. Let’s get started!

What is authority

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of authority is as follows.

1a: power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior

1b: freedom granted by one in authority

So, someone who has a higher hierarchy than us usually has higher authority than us: parent-children, manager-direct reports, teacher-students, and so on, and so forth. On the other hand, sometimes authority isn’t determined by hierarchy; an example is access control. The Human Resources (HR) department of an organization technically is on the same level as many other functions, but they have the authority to access the company’s employee records, which is not accessible by most employees (or known as “Lateral Authority”).

Higher authority usually translates to higher power… which leads us to the next section: “What can you do with that power?”

Utilizing authority

When someone is given an authority, there are 3 options that may happen. They can either become an autocratic leader, a democratic leader, or a passive leader. But how?

Autocratic leader

“I have higher authority than you.”

“I am always right.”

“If you oppose me, you will regret it.”

“That is not right because I do not like it.”

They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think it is a very relevant saying nowadays. We see people with power do anything they like without consequences, because they have been granted authorization to do so. The one condition that allows this to happen is a broken moral compass. If someone with a functional moral compass is given the authority to do something bad, they will think twice or even thrice before committing it. Not so much with those with a broken moral compass, though, as long as they stand to gain, they will dare to see other people suffer.

Unfortunately, this is what’s currently happening in Indonesia. While we are at it, please keep the people of Sumatra in your prayers because they really need it right now. Not only are they suffering from flash floods, but they also have to face intimidations from Indonesian government, such as restricting information from going out of the province. As mentioned above, the oppressors likely have been granted authority by their higher-ups to do what they are doing, and unfortunately, their moral compass is broken, so they do not even think about opposing the order.

Democratic Leader

Right, let’s stop talking about dictatorship because it is honestly depressing. Let’s talk about what a real leader should do (which, I am also currently still learning).

“Here is the list of things that we can do. What do you think?”

“I think the current approach is good, but how about the alternative?”

“I’d like you to work on this initiative because I think you have the capability to do it.”

“The current approach is not advisable because it is not only vulnerable, but it is also not optimal. Here are the references.”

If an autocratic leader gives other people authority for their benefit, a leader gives other people authority for collective benefit. An autocratic leader will rarely want their pawns to be smarter than them, whereas a leader will be happy when a teammate surpasses their capability.

Trust is key when giving authority as a leader. I think you can’t just give the same level of authorization to everyone to do anything—everything has to be thought about, even if only a bit. Sometimes, authorizing someone who doesn’t have the required skills to do something is the same as throwing someone into a lion’s cage. It doesn’t only hurt them, but it also hurts our credibility. This is probably one of the dilemmas that often happens in the real world.

The leaders’ communication approach is more towards discussion. As long as the data supports it and it makes sense in the current context, then it doesn’t matter who wins the argument, as long as everyone benefits from the decision. In software engineering, this is applied through code reviews and architectural decisions.

I like to think that nowadays, the term “leader” means someone with a higher hierarchy. I don’t think so. Anyone can actually be a leader if they utilize their authority well. In other words, a “leader” doesn’t have to be a manager, director, or whatever title you call it. You can be a leader by simply taking charge of something. If that something is not clear, what can you do to make it clear? If you can navigate through those difficulties, I believe you have the qualities to become a leader already.

Passive leader

Now, the last one. You might be thinking, “How can someone with authority be passive?” Well, the answer is simple: they just don’t have the drive (yet), or maybe their drive is gone, which, maybe not really their fault (especially for the latter). For example, maybe they are burnt out, which most often will cause massive performance drop.

I often heard from football-related discussions that “leaders don’t hide in a match”. I think the same, too, in the real world. If you rank quite high in a hierarchy (having authority) but often find yourselves “hiding” when facing difficulties or challenges, I’m afraid you’d have to do better than that. “Hiding” in this case can mean being overly reliant on others or not taking full accountability for yourself.

As long as we “hide”, we prevent ourselves from “showing up”, which means less chance for our work to be recognized. But yeah, of course, it’s case-by-case because not everything is within our control, but you get the point.

Closing words

That’s all for this post! To recap:

So, which leader path that you want to choose? In any case, thank you for reading and I hope next year will be better for us all!