Leadership: What would happen if I empowered everyone in my team?

Have you ever heard a manager or leader speaking about their teams and say something like: 

"Yeah, I hire the best employees I can, empower them and then just get out of their way to let them get on with it"

If you haven't, this is a hugely powerful message to rally toward, not to mention strive for in your own leadership journey. It also makes for smart business.

There are teams that function on being told what to do, a micro-managed "can't think for myself" environment where the preference is toward just doing as they are told. In these teams, performance and professional growth are all tied directly to the person leading them.

Imagine if that were you leading a team like that. A hard ask, right? That's a lot of pressure on your shoulders. 

What if there was another way?

How would you feel if you had a team of people who were trusted and knew it, were empowered, had the ability to do their job and do it with real a sense of ownership? Let me tell you, its one of the best feelings a manager can have in his or her role. 

But so many leaders worry that if they were to do something like this, that manager / leader would do themselves out of a job! 

Let me reassure you. You won't lose your job. You will just perform it differently, at a new next level.

Not only is this "get the right people then get out of their way to let them do it" ideal bigger than just you and your role, this should be the distinction you aim for, for three very simple reasons.

1. You will increase your team's development / job satisfaction
2. You will increase your own development / job satisfaction
3. You will increase your own businesses development and profit

To back this up, my manager recently found an article on LinkedIn and shared it with me, knowing this is the direction I aim for in my role as a Team Leader. I've been exceptionally lucky to have taken over a team of people who all fit firmly into the level one category already, but there are a few things I look for beyond my teams borders and do attempt to follow this diagram below. 

As you can see, Eric Chester here has had some great ideas and this is an excellent way of displaying them.

But what does each section actually mean for you and your team?

Again, from the LinkedIn post, here are the breakdowns. 

I have added in my extra bits in italics so as not to offend the original writer.

1. Hire Talented People of High Character: Trust is the foundation of autonomy. So, while you want talented people on your team, if you’re forced to choose between someone who has the skills and someone you’re certain you can trust, ALWAYS choose the latter. Go to great lengths in the hiring process to make certain you’re bringing on people who have unquestionable ethics and character.

Skills can be taught, a great attitude, is a lot more difficult to teach / gain buy in for change. 

1a. Hire people who will be a great team fit: This is something I have worked ever since I first saw what could be accomplished by following this idea. Firstly, a leaders goal is to "protect the team". You want to add something to the group of people you look after, that will enhance how your team operates. Look at your team and try to see what might be missing. Is it someone who loves numbers? Someone who beams positivity? Do you need a tried and tested? Or a real go-getter to inspire the others? Or do you have too many socialites keen on talking all the time? Do you add in a couple of quieter members of the team? Always consider what you need to help the existing team members. Consider what new people will bring.

2. Clarify Goals and Objectives: Cultures that promote autonomy need employees to work toward targeted, concrete objectives—priorities and deadlines set by their manager. Think of it like establishing the rules of the game before the players take the field. The employees have the opportunity to use their strategic skills and creativity to score more points, but they must know what victory looks like.

KA's, Measurements of Success, whatever you want to call them, these hold the keys toward providing autonomy for your team members. If they understand the goal, know what is expected of them, they will take the bull by the horns and go for it. The WIIFM (whats in it for me) will assist you empowering them because they will prefer ownership of their success much more than you owning it. 

NOTE: your KA's or Measurements of success must allow for the creativity of doing "more". Agree first on what those might be. An example would be "your yearly score was "X" but you went above and beyond by doing "Y" so will now increase your "X" score to a higher "Z" score.

3. Train Process and Procedure: The confidence to correctly make difficult decisions stems from the training an employee receives. That’s why great companies are relentless in their training processes. The Container Store ensures that all new hires receive hundreds of hours of training before they ever set foot on the sales floor. At Marriott Hotels, every employee is cross-trained to do just about any job in the hotel just in case they need to fill in for someone at a moment’s notice. At Wegmans, the deli worker can tell you the reason that a particular type of prosciutto costs $ 90 per pound is that it came from an Iberian pig that was hand-fed acorns from an organic forest in Brazil. Great companies know that training doesn’t just make a difference; it IS the difference.

In just about all cases, your teams training needs will fall into these four categories. 

1 - Up-skilling 2. Cross-skilling 3. Re-skilling or 4. Inductions. 

All of them can have anyone in your team involved. They can help with any category, even to the point of delivering the training. NOTE to consider: Growth can be both limited and enhanced with this design of utilising your own people. Limitations follow a path of "I was taught this way so I will teach this way" and "We've always done it this way, so will continue to do so" and can impact resourcing levels. The enhancements come from allowing your people to spread their wings by doing the teaching. You must retain sign off for all training in the early days to ensure you allow them to question the norm. In larger organisations of 150 plus, enhancements are driven by someone who has "trainer" as their full time occupation. Trainers push like coaches and therefore help "become" the difference mentioned above. 

Regardless of how your business is set up, an employee life-cycle (fig 1) needs to be considered at all times and set against a robust training methodology (fig 2), just to keep your eye on the prize. 

As per the beginning of this 3. train process and procedure, ensure consistency is a goal and a single source of truth is found/created so that each person understands and can easily find answers should their systems (or memories) fail. 

Fig 1                                                    Fig 2

4. Empower Your People: The key to ‘letting go’ is to begin empowering people to make small decisions and work their way up. Use those occasions when your employees approach you for help as opportunities to empower them to make the decision. 

Ask questions like "what do you think we should do?" to encourage them to begin coming to you with confirmation questions rather than straight up questions. This will traverse them from just asking you with no thought, to thinking about the answer before they ask it. 

Empowering can be done simply by providing opportunities for them to show you what they can do. Provide mini-projects, let them teach someone, bring them along to a "higher up" meeting, expose them to other parts of the business. Most of all though, listen to what they want or help them find what they want by asking the right questions. 

The idea is to trust them make a decision and encourage them regardless of how it plays out. However, be sure to hold them accountable for the outcomes as it will motivate them to carefully think things through and take responsibility for the results. That’s essential for building leadership skills.

In the end following these 4 steps, the results will always speak for themselves. 

If the employee demonstrates the ability to make good decisions, they should be granted more trust and more independent decision-making latitude. But if things go awry, take it as a sign that they need more support from you. And scolding them for a bad result or micromanaging them to the ‘nth degree is not what is implied by the term support. It simply means that they may need a more clearly defined goal, more training, or even more confidence. 

And that will come from your trusting them again.

And thats the end of the LinkedIn article. You might notice I still haven't answered the title question of "What would happen if I empowered everyone in my team?"

So, here we go. What does tend to happen?

By following these guidelines, your team will perform at higher levels than ever before, they will (incredibly) feel all the better for it because they have more say, they will have more ownership, more confidence, be more involved, understand more about the business, attain better pay increases and have more interest in how your business performs and want to come to work more often. 

You will have the proud fact that you managed to create a high performing / positive / agile team delivering better results than ever before, have more time to spend working strategically to help them (and your business) be even better, have more time to plan opportunities to continue the growth, you will be managing a happier team who will be better to manage, not to mention it being highly likely that you will be recognised and rewarded for all of this great stuff too.

The business you work for will become more agile as a result in both the marketplace and inside its walls, make more money without compromising any ideals or their culture because everyone is working toward the same goals, will stand head and shoulders above their competitors and be a more positive, sparked environment to work in.

And all that, just from "hiring the best employees to add value amongst your already brilliant existing team, empowering them all and then just getting out of their way to let them get on with it"

Not a bad outcome for just thinking about this leadership stuff slightly differently, don't you think?  

Any questions or comments? Please write them in the comments field below this post.

And will see you next time.

Darren

Hi there, glad you could make it.

Welcome to this blog site!

Before we get started, please read the DISCLAIMER on the right there (mobile users, click the drop down). It's important that you get your head around the reason for this content.

Yes, it deals with Leadership (amongst other things) but truth be told, I'm not an expert on this subject. I'm not even 100% sure that anyone really is, or even can be.

Leadership is not limited to being employed as a leader either. You can be a leader at the most entry level position of the business you work for. Leadership is not a title, its a caring, helpful attitude. It is also one of those things that changes with not only the environments in which you lead or are a part of, the content you are responsible for, the ever changing situations you find yourself (and your team) in, not to mention all the different people who roll through your leadership in general. Each situation, task, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, and even every person can subtly change your team's dynamic and the overall requirements to succeed. Think about it - you can start a year with 5 people and end it with 5 completely different people. I hope you don't, that kind of impact likely wouldn't be a positive one. Regardless, in every case, each person will either add something or take something away from your team - and either can be good.

A few constants that will definitely help you on your leadership journey [reminder- you dont have to have a leadership title to be a leader], are self adaptability and adaptability with other people (because everyone is different), a wide awareness by "seeing" how your team are feeling, believing in who you are, being open to any change, care and concern for the people you lead and by simply being yourself.

It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.

Knowing who you are and understanding others needs, is 80% of the leadership journey, the rest is stuff to try. By knowing yourself and others, you're well on your way to empathy town which just so happens to lead straight into being-a-good-leader-that-people-will-want-to-follow-ville.

Cheesy yes. True? Also yes.

And this is where this website hopefully comes into it's own for you. All going well. 

Topics I cover here are designed to help you do things smarter, not work harder. They are simply things I have covered in one on one sessions with staff/peers or through mentoring outside of work or are things great people have taught me. These are all items that people down through the years have found helpful and have said as much. They often deal with serious issues and helpful ways you might be able to handle them without losing your cool or mind.    

The Japanese have a perfect word for the "why" here too - Keiei (kay-aye) which loosely translates to "making an effort developing societies harmoniously and trying to raise the well-being of the people". It goes hand in hand with where I work as well. 

"To enhance the quality of life for the elderly and disabled..." 

This site is all about raising the well-being of people in general, helping and making some kind of positive difference. There is no agenda except to hopefully cover something that might empower either you or someone you know to handle something they didn't know how to before. 

As is life sometimes, you and I both know - tough times are tough times. No one is a stranger to them. Being a leader either going through them yourself or helping someone else go through them, is just as tough. Having a place like this where someone is giving you some support/back-up might be good. Take a look at the URL of this site too - it says it all. It's like an old Japanese statement which speaks to underdog / fighter in all of us;

You can be knocked down, but the strength of your character gets you back up. Every time. 

You'll note I reference a fair bit of Asian thinking too and no, it can't be helped. I'm the product of my environment as well, exactly the same as you :)

So with all that said and the disclaimer read, please post comments in with anything you can add, you can even submit your own post if you wish. Happy to hear from anyone with advice that will help.

All that said, feel free to read on....

Attitude - it can be your saving grace

First post.

Like everyone who is reading this knows, yep, life can deliver a few hard knocks, get a bit frustrating or just get you tired of being tired. Maybe you haven't had a holiday for a while due to circumstances beyond your control. End of the year can sometimes have this affect too - you've put in 12 months and worked hard, exhausted. 

Similarly starts of the year can weigh in like pro-fighters with fists the size of your face as well. Add to that deaths, divorces, dramas, break-ups, teenager issues, smaller children acting like teenagers, work problems etc and all of sudden, it can feel like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders whilst riding on a 4 x G-force roller coaster. 

Needless to say, sometimes these pressures can build up (see what I did there?) and both big and small annoyances can feel like mountains in no time flat.

But there is some good news - in just about all cases.

Consider this - if you were able to stop and look around, take a few calming breaths, plus deliberately alter how you are viewing things by challenging yourself, mountains CAN get smaller. Even if only by a millimetre or two. But a millimetre is a millimetre, right?

Its an improvement.

Often people who care about you, will act as catalysts by kicking you in the ass when needed, offering you support you didn't know you had,or maybe you'll just read something that will pick you up just enough to help. All o​f these things can allow you to see differences in your day that you couldn't see when you were upset/angry/frustrated. 

Its 100% true that anger and fear both cloud judgement.

But you can change all that. 

And like the title states, with attitude.

But how? 

Well, for everyone it's different, but in every case, the first step to be brave. Take that nervous or flustered feeling and turn it into something that works for you. A few stomach clenches with some even breathing will help too.

Once you've started that, here are a few things to get you started.

i) Lame as it sounds, you can tell yourself "I'm in control of how I'm going to handle this" - just dont do this in a mirror. That's weird. Especially if you get caught doing it.

ii) In any situation where you are feeling anxious/afraid/stressed out/annoyed - take a few calming breaths – oxygen is your friend. Just don't over do it. Breathe normally. Focus on it.

iii) Take a step back mentally (and physically if you need to) to get an objective/less stressful look at where you're at, even where others are at.

iv) Often the key to taking anxiety out of a situation is to ask questions to find out more. Knowing what you're dealing with is better than guessing. "Fear of the unknown" is a common problem - so fix it and ask so its not as unknown anymore.

v) Be brutally honest with yourself - try to analyse "why" you might feel the way you do about things - may not be the reason you thought. Did you fail to prepare? Do you still have time? Prepping is more important than you realise.

vi) Make a no-nonsense plan with how you're going to deal with the cause/s with how you will react - either physically or mentally – the actual cause make no difference. Again, you're deciding how you're going to handle this, how you are going to react.

vii) "Attack" your own negativity/fear/anxiety. These things will breed given half the chance. Remember - you're choosing how to react - I can't state this enough - it really is your choice.

viii) Act positively - do what you planned to do - you're taking your own power back from the situation/mood that took it away. No matter how bad the situation might appear to be, its on you to try and improve it for yourself.

...And surprisingly all these things can literally take seconds to work through.

The key is always around trying to have an objective look at what is happening around you. Increasing your awareness to your environment. Emotional content can be the one thing that hinders you trying to think logically. By finding a way to remove some of the emotional content, often the situation cane become clearer. 

Now I'm not saying you should be emotionless or Mr or Ms (Miss, Mrs etc) Positivity or over the top prepared either.

...but a little internal positivity and logic can go a long way.

And once you get into the habit, changing your attitude and the way you view a situation can get easier.

Clear heads see clear things.

To wrap this up, these are just the tips of the iceberg. Hopefully something in here has made a bit of sense and perhaps it has helped. Attitude is one of those things about you that can keep you safe, can be a powerful line of defence when you need one, and can change the way you view the world.

Through it you can help yourself.

As an aside from looking after yourself and gettin' your own head on straight, something else you can consider, is the picture below. 

Whilst you are getting yourself together, spare a thought for how your own attitude might be impacting on others. They connect and have the ability to grow with those around you. If yours is positive, often those around you will head in that direction too. It has to be real and genuine though.

Give it a shot, and good luck. 

So, post over. Thank you for coming by. Please feel free to offer any helpful suggestions you might have so that any others who might come by for a read get the value of your insights too.

#strongerthanyourealise #yougotthis

Darren