Two managers are presenting their budgets to the leadership team on the same afternoon.
The first is Tom. His numbers are solid, and he has worked hard on them for weeks, and he knows every line. Ten minutes into the presentation, the chief operating officer cuts across him. “These savings don’t hold up. You say this every year.”
Tom feels his face go warm, and begin explaining, faster than before. He goes back two slides to prove his point. He mentions how many hours the team put in. When the COO pushes again, Tom pushes back harder, and for a few minutes the meeting turns into a contest. Tom wins most of the points. Nobody in the room looks comfortable.
The second is Maria. Her numbers are, if anything, a little weaker than Tom’s. Halfway through, the COO challenges one of her figures in almost the same words.
Maria stops. She lets a second pass and say “That’s a fair question,” she says. “I still believe the figure is right, and here’s why.” She explains in two sentences. The COO pushes again. “You may have seen something I haven’t,” she says. “Let me check it with finance and send you the answer by three.” Then she moves on to the next slide.
A month later, the COO asks Maria to join the steering group for next year’s plan. Tom isn’t asked, and he can’t work out why. His numbers were better.
What Maria had that afternoon has a name. It’s called groundedness, and it one of the six strands of Authentic Authority, and it’s the one people feel before they have heard a word you’ve said. This article is about what it is, what pulls you off it, and how you get it back.
What groundedness is
Groundedness is the steadiness that comes from not needing that all things go your way. You don’t need other people’s approval, you don’t need to win, and you have nothing to prove.
It isn’t a personality type because quiet people are not automatically grounded, and on the other end – loud people aren’t automatically ungrounded. Plenty of quiet people are anxious underneath, and plenty of lively, funny, direct people are completely grounded.
Groundedness does not make you a cold person. Maria wasn’t detached – she cared about her budget, and she took the challenge seriously. What she didn’t do was seeing the challenge as a threat to who she was.
That’s the whole difference. Tom heard “your numbers are wrong” as “you’re not good enough,” and he defended himself. Maria heard it as a question about a number, and she answered the question.
Why the people around you feel it first
People read your state before they process your words. You have felt this yourself when omeone walks into a meeting tense, and within a minute everyone is a little tense. Someone else walks in settled, and the room seems to slow down.
Organisational researcher Sigal Barsade studied this and called it the ripple effect. In one of her experiments, a single person’s mood spread through a working group and changed how well its members cooperated.
When you’re pulled off centre, your team doesn’t just hear what you say. They pick up on it, and a leader who is visibly rattled sends a very clear message: this is more dangerous than it looks.
On the other side – when you’re grounded, you send the opposite message. Nobody has to be told the situation is under control. They can feel that calm groundedness in you, and that you are steady enough to think. That’s where your Authority starts, often before you’ve said anything at all.
The three pulls
Almost everyone has one of three needs that knocks them off centre under pressure. Most of us have a favourite.
The need to be liked
That need shows up when you agree too quickly. You begin water down the difficult message until it no longer has any meaning. You avoid the conversation you know you need to have, because you know that someone might be disappointed in you.
People around you can sense it quickly, and the manager who need to be liked will usually end up with less Authority. Simply because nobody feels they can rely on them to say the hard thing when it matters.
The need to be right
You will see this one as being defensive. Every challenge turns into an argument you have to win. You interrupt and pile up evidence. You keep going until the other person gives in.
This was Tom’s pull. He won most of the points and through that he lost Authority. People stopped challenging him, which could look like agreement. In fact, they had simply decided that discussing with him was worth the trouble.
The need to prove yourself
Here, the pull looks like performing. You talk longer than you need to. You mention your experience, your results, your credentials. You fill the silences because these silences feels like a gap in your case.
It’s most common in people who are new to a job role, or who feel they don’t quite belong in the situation. The more you try to perform, the more the people around you sense that you aren’t sure you’ve earned your place. You end up losing the Authority that you are trying to prove you have.
What groundedness isn’t
There is a fake version of groundedness, and you need to know it so you don’t mistake it for the real thing.
The fake is suppression: When you try to keep a calm face – covering a storm underneath. The voice is level, the smile is fixed, and the jaw is tight. It can get you through a single meeting. But over time it will cost you a lot of energy. People sense your effort even when they can’t name it. They experience you as controlled, which is not at all the same as being grounded.
Groundedness is also different from not caring. Someone who shrugs off every challenge because nothing matters to them isn’t grounded either. They’re absent, and people don’t follow absence either.
Where your groundedness is coming from
Some people seem to be born with it, but most people have it built it. It tends to come from four places.
When you are separating your worth from the moment. A challenge to your numbers is a challenge to your numbers. A disagreement about a plan is a disagreement about a plan. When your self-esteem doesn’t depend on how this particular meeting goes, you can open up and really listen.
Preparation. You will be calm simply because you know you have done all you can. When you know your material, you won´t need to defend it. You can let people test it all they want, because you already know where it’s strong and where it’s thin.
Knowing what you stand for. When your standards are crystal clear to you, the pressure you could experience has less to push against. You’re not deciding what matters when you are IN the fire. You decided that earlier, and now you only have to apply it when needed.
Having been wrong before and survived. People who have made mistakes, owned them and come through it tend to be less afraid of being wrong. That’s why Maria could say, “You may have seen something I haven’t.” Being wrong about one figure wasn’t a disaster to her. It was information.
What it looks like in practice
You don’t need to develop a new personality to be more grounded. You just need to develop a few small habits will carry most of the weight.
Pause before you answer anyone challenging you or your work. One breath is all you need. It will tell the room you’re thinking rather than reacting, and it gives the pull a moment to pass.
Answer the question that was asked. Don’t answer the attack you heard underneath it. “Is this figure, right?” is a question about a figure. Not an attack.
Say what you know and what you don’t. “I’m confident about this part and less sure about that part. I will get back about it.” Those two sentences show more steadiness than any amount of confident talk.
Let silence sit. When you’ve made your point, stop. You don’t need to fill the gap by talking. The people who can hold a silence are almost always the ones people trusts.
Slow down by one notch. When you feel the pressure, speak a little slower than you want to. It steadies you, and it steadies everyone who are listening.
None of this is technique for its own sake. Each habit is a way of acting as if you don’t need the moment to go your way and doing that over and over is how you come to feel it.
Why it matters for your Authority
Groundedness holds the other strands of Authority together. Your groundedness is only useful if you can think clearly under pressure. Your standards only hold if you can manage that someone is unhappy with you.
That is why the COO chose Maria. He didn’t doubt Tom’s ability. He had watched how each of them behaved when the meeting got difficult, and he knew which one he wanted beside him when next year’s plan got difficult too.
That choice is what Authority looks like when it’s granted. Nobody announced it. The COO had simply seen enough.
Try this
Think back over the last month and find the moment you were thrown off centre. Which of the three was it. Was it the need to be liked, the need to be right, or was it the need to prove yourself?
Most people will be able recognise their favourite straight away.
During this week, try to pick one meeting where you expect a challenge to show up. Before you go in, decide on one small thing you will do differently. It might be a pause before you answer. Or you might let someone else be right about a point that really doesn’t matter. You could also stop talking a bit earlier than you usually would.
Afterwards, notice what happened. It will probably be more than you would expect from something so small. Authority is built from exactly these moments, and the people watching will remember them.
