Why is it that two different people in the same job can have such different results? One teacher is highly respected by students and another teacher is run over by the same group of kids. One supervisor gets a lot of high quality work out of a group of people and another supervisor is ignored.

It is abundantly clear that focusing only on job descriptions of positions that people hold does not adequately describe what we experience. If job descriptions were adequate, then we could take the job descriptions from a really successful school and plant them in an unsuccessful school-and voila: kids achieve and behavior turns around. But we can’t.

Personal characteristics play an important role in how authority gets used and therefore the results of that authority.

What personal characteristics are associated with the successful use of authority? My mentor, Juanita Price differentiated between Personal and Positional Authority.

Positional Authority is the position a person holds. Positional authority is accompanied by the right to control the actions of others. The factory supervisor has the right to expect and to get work from the factory employees. The teacher has the right to expect students to do the work of learning. The sergeant has the right to expect new recruits to do whatever is asked of them without question. Dr. House has the right to get rid of anyone he wants to, for any reason, because of the position he holds.

Personal Authority, in contrast, is the ability we can develop in our selves to control ourselves. Little children have very little self-control. Infants have none. As we grow up, we develop the ability to control ourselves. We learn that other people have the same rights we do and how to take turns. We learn that abusing other people verbally or physically is wrong-it hurts them. We learn that the rights we have are accompanied by responsibilities to exercise those rights so that we don’t step on other people’s rights.

Or do we learn this? Many people don’t.

And that’s what makes the critical difference between people who occupy similar positions. A good teacher has self-control and sets good examples of behavior towards others. A good boss is fair and consistent. A good sergeant inspires confidence in the recruits by exercising authority in a mature way. Just because a person in an authority position has the right to do something doesn’t mean that it is wise to do that thing.

Good authority figures have wisdom, which is significantly different from knowledge.

If we are to consider how we might create effective schools or consider how we might make workplace climates better, then we need to think about how people use the authority they have been given. Rather than create longer, more detailed job descriptions which can be carried out in word by the immature and in spirit only by those who are mature, we need to focus on the characteristic of maturity itself.