The Magnifying Glass of Power

Author: Majken Lorelei Matzau

More than twenty years ago, I taught on a leadership development program for C-level leaders focused on personal leadership. Four different companies had sent their leaders on the program — among them BEC, whose CEO at the time, Leo Svendsen, had also been a driving force behind the creation and development of the course.

When the day came for the program to begin, twenty-four leaders sat gathered around the conference table, and as part of the classic opening ritual, Leo Svendsen was to speak to them about the background and purpose of the program.

I still remember settling into a seat at the back of the room and automatically bracing myself for the usual, mildly dull executive address — the kind that typically involves a laborious run-through of strategy, targets, and expectations.

So great was my surprise when, a couple of minutes into his speech, on a sudden impulse, Leo crumpled up his notes and threw them in the wastebasket. He then stepped close in front of the leaders and looked them in the eye — one by one. And there he told them, with that slight tremor in his voice that made you truly feel he was speaking from a deeper and more authentic place within himself, that he was a leader on a journey himself. He told them how, a couple of years earlier, he had achieved everything he had wanted. He was a respected chief executive, he had a beautiful wife. Wonderful children. A large, expensive car. A grand villa. In short, everything he could have dreamed of on paper.

And yet he did not feel whole. He did not feel filled up. Something was missing. He was not happy in the way he had imagined he would be — back when he was dreaming of all the things he wanted to achieve. But what was it he was missing? "I looked at myself in the mirror, and I did not like what I saw," he said.

This became the starting point of his personal journey. He began an executive coaching process, where he worked intensively and therapeutically with himself; he enrolled in leadership programs focused on personal leadership rather than strategic management; and he read books and travelled with the aim of coming into deeper and more authentic contact with himself. And it was his own inner journey that had spurred him to develop and establish the very leadership program in personal leadership that these leaders were now about to take part in.

I got goosebumps as Leo spoke. I could feel him in my heart, and tears came to my eyes. And not just me — the whole room, every leader present, could feel how deeply felt and authentic his account of his life and inner journey was.

The room was completely silent when he stopped speaking. You could have heard a pin drop. It was not at all what the leaders had expected to hear.

Leo received thunderous applause, and when we then moved on to the obligatory round of introductions, something remarkable happened: the first leader to introduce himself told his personal story. About what he struggled with as a leader, as a man, and as a human being. Courageously, openly, and authentically. And this repeated itself with all twenty-four leaders.

Not one of them introduced themselves the way they normally would — with a dull recitation of their CV. We could not have asked for a better start to a program focused on the psychological and personal dimension of the leadership role.

The magnifying glass of power

Had Leo Svendsen opened with a traditional executive address, not a single one of the leaders present would have opened up themselves. On the contrary, they would have sat with their arms crossed — entrenched behind the conference tables in their obligatory corporate checked shirts — and would have introduced themselves in the predictable way, with a tedious walk-through of their CVs.

The story of Leo's opening speech is an example of what Adam Galinsky, Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, calls the leader amplification effect. This effect describes how a leader's communication and actions are experienced by employees as magnified many times over. Often without the leader being aware of it. The higher the leadership position, the greater the effect.

Because Leo was the chief executive, we experienced his story through the magnifying glass of power — far more powerfully than we otherwise would have. And because he spoke from the heart, he reached us listeners in the heart, so that we felt him tenfold. The same applies when a senior leader delivers criticism or admonishment — it is experienced by the company's employees as magnified many times over.

Leo inspired the participants and infected them with his honest presence and his authentic energy, and as the most senior leader in the room, he set the rhythm with his baton for how his own leaders now opened up, stepped forward, and introduced themselves.

Because this is what senior leadership can do at its best. Leadership that inspires is the key to creating more than followership, which is otherwise one of the most important disciplines within modern leadership. It is the key to making employees grow — to making them feel seen, valued, and understood. And thereby also to attracting, developing, and retaining the sought-after knowledge workers and specialists.

— Honored be Leo's memory, for Leo is no longer among the living.

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