Empowering others is a nice idea…until you actually have to do it.
Written by: Vijay Krishnan
From my early days as a brand manager in a CPG company fresh out of business school, through various corporate leadership roles, and now as a lead pastor in a faith community, empowering leadership has been a consistent theme. It’s an idea I’ve read about extensively, heard taught at countless conferences, and continually aspired to embody in my own leadership journey.
Managerial wisdom says, this is a keystone practice of leadership that can help you to build high-performing teams, increase retention, achieve goals faster, and create a positive organizational culture. I mean, who wouldn't want that?
Early on in my leadership journey, I would have said I was an empowering leader. But it wasn't until a few years later that it began to dawn on me, what empowering leadership really looks like and what it would require of me.
At first, it was the (frustrating) realization that a good leader doesn't just delegate tasks to team members, but also instills the confidence that with the delegation, the team member is to own the accountability for the outcome. In other words, an empowering leader doesn't just get their team to work towards the goals that they have established, but actually gives them the freedom and ability to make decisions (even more to the point, to make decisions that their leader wouldn't necessarily make).
Let's be honest, if you just give your team the ability to make all of the decisions that you would actually make, then are they really their decisions or are they just trying to be good soldiers? Have you really empowered them to think and to act independently or are you subtly or overtly creating an environment of control?
Personally, I have found this hard to do. It meant that at times I was going to have to defend outcomes to my higher-ups that stemmed from decisions my team made that might have even been ones I wouldn't have made, without throwing them under the bus. Even more difficult was encouraging my team that unexpected and at times, less than desirable outcomes weren't bad things at all. We were always learning, and we needed to grow together by reflecting on both good and undesirable outcomes.
It was also hard because it meant that at times our team was less efficient. After all, it’s faster when the most experienced people in the room take the lead and make quick decisions. It’s slower, and sometimes messier, when someone with less experience works through the decision-making process, especially if it means dealing with the fallout later.
An oversimplified but very real analogy is what I experienced with my kids when they were young and I was trying to do a project around the house or in the garage. "Daddy, can I help?" (I'm embarrassed to admit) was not a question that I enjoyed. It meant the whole project would go slower, that I would have to be extremely patient and possibly literally pick up pieces afterwards.
But what was true for my kids is also true for any of the teams that we lead. Without leaders taking the time to equip, to delegate decisions, to support from the side and not just from the front, none of us would have the opportunity to grow or to become empowering leaders ourselves.
Big Fat Obstacles
If I'm honest, the two obstacles that often stood in the way of me truly being an empowering leader were:
- Not wanting to surrender control
- Insecurity about my own leadership
Letting go of control
No one likes the feeling of being out of control. More than that, we are often told directly or indirectly that our job as leaders is to be in control; to always have the answers, to always know what's going on, to always have two hands on the wheel, and to be sure of ourselves in every situation.
To let others make decisions that may have project or time or cost implications is to let go of control. To empower others is to live with uncertainty - before, during, and after decisions are made. The truth is, we might get punished for the outcomes where we were less in control. We might even be told by the people we are accountable to that we should not have delegated that decision or stepped back from the lead role or taken our hands off the wheel for that long.
In my experience, however, surrendering control is not only key to letting an individual or team make different decisions than you. It's also a way to practice being a non-anxious leader; someone who doesn't need to be in control to be able to lead.
Fighting insecurity
Working in environments with organizational structures where leaders have direct reports and have others that they directly report in presents an added challenge to empowering leadership: Leadership insecurity.
To delegate decisions to my team, especially decisions that I wouldn't make myself, meant embracing uncertain outcomes and at times picking up pieces from things I wouldn't have done. This meant that I may look bad to the people around me or to the people I reported to. The simple truth is, at various times in my leadership journey, I prioritized how I wanted to be perceived over what it meant to be a truly empowering leader. I prioritized my own career advancement over the development of those I was leading.
What I needed in those moments, and what I began to try to do over time was to see my job in terms of truly growing others and helping them to look good. The character quality one needs to be an empowering leader is humility. As the great C.S. Lewis said, "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's simply thinking of yourself less."
Keeping fear at bay
To be honest, I think this is an up-and-down journey. In some ways, I feel like I have grown quite a bit in becoming an empowering leader. And yet, when I find myself in new situations or in challenging operating environments, the default of self-protection and the need for control can so easily kick in.
At these times, the most important thing for me to be aware of is the way in which fear is creeping up and having too much influence in my thoughts and behaviors. When I am operating out of fear or insecurity, then control is almost an automatic response. But when I am willing to focus on the people I'm serving, the great possibilities that come from uncertainty, and the fact that I play a very small part in the big picture of all that God is doing in the world, fear's effects are neutralized.
As you reflect on your own leadership journey, ask yourself:
- Which high-performing teams or environments were you a part of? What were the key characteristics of the leader in those situations?
- What ways, if any, have insecurity or the need to control affected your leadership in the past?
- What would it look like to be more focused on the people you are serving and the development of your team instead of how you look to others in the process of leading?
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