“Empowerment comes from teaching others things they can do to become less dependent on you.”
Ken Blanchard
I was facilitating The Maxwell Leadership Game with a group of leaders in an organization. During the training we entered a discussion about how overwhelmed they felt. At one point I asked them how many of them could train somebody else on their team to do some of their work.
Most every hand went up. Next, I explored if they were doing it. Soon they started explaining reasons they couldn’t or haven’t done it.
Empowerment is a great idea, but we may not always truly be empowering someone. Below are four approaches to empowering we may use with our teams. Two of them do more to disempower than empower others.
Dump
I once worked alongside a team and the leader would tell his team a task to do and then leave. Since I was not directly reporting to this leader, I would learn their frustrations. They would be confused because they did not know what success looked like for this task.
As a leader if you dump on your team chances are they feel they can never meet your expectations. Dumpers drop the task with no expectation clarification and then return frustrated because the team didn’t do it the right way. But they did not know what the “right way” was.
Dominate
With this type of empowerment we may think we are helping, but unintentionally we frustrate our team. When we take the posture of dominate, we provide the “what” and ALL of how we want something done. Another word for it . . . micromanagement.
As leaders if we tell our team what we want done and then swing to the opposite extreme of dumping by giving every single step then we disempower our team. We may think we are helping them, but the unintended consequence is the team either feels we do not trust them or controlled. Also, we are failing to equip them to do the job without us and possibly learn better ways to complete the job.
Direct
With this approach we are stepping closer toward matching the definition from Blanchard above. This is an improvement from dominate. Maybe this is a new task for someone. They may need more details on what to do or not do.
As the leader give them broad steps they could take, but not all the details. This gives them the tools they need, but they have the freedom to come to you with questions while figuring it out on their own. This stage will involve balancing asking lots of questions to help them think into how to complete the task with telling them some steps they may not know.
Delegate
Allow me to describe this at the 10-80-10 principle I have learned from others. Imagine you are building a playground for children under the age of eight. You will install a fence to protect the kids, but the playground could look very different depending on resources, creativity, and more. This is what this principle looks like.
You know what you want. Paint a clear picture at the beginning of the outcome you are looking for and key boundaries the team cannot cross. Let them go to do the work, this is the 80. Be available if they need you for questions. Near the end connect to see ways you could uplevel what they have created or help them complete it.
When we walk the tension of providing support with allowing room to grow, we create an empowering environment. It takes time and energy to do this, but this is how we develop leaders and not just order takers. Need help thinking into how you can better empower your team? Contact me for a powerful coaching session at no cost to you. Lead Well.
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