“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Empowering is tough. It means giving up control to allow others to take over and accomplish a task or a job. This is very similar to delegating, but empowering is giving up all control to the person, whereas I find delegating still gives you room to be involved.
For many leaders, we are control driven. We have to do or be involved in each manner of the job. Sometimes this is a trust issue. We don’t really trust the person we are giving the task to do the job correctly. So, we don’t truly empower them to do the job.
So, before we can empower someone, many times we have to train them. We may have to teach the basics steps of the task, or maybe train them to the expectations of the task. It is foolish for any leader to just tell someone to go and do something that the person may not be ready to do. That is why I wholly believe in Situational Leadership.
Delegating, and then empowering a person on a task is a process. Following the Situational Leadership model of determining a person’s development level on that task, and then providing the right kind of leadership based on their development level is critical to tasks and jobs getting done correctly and up to standards.
However, one of the worst things a leader can do is to not empower a person to accomplish a task when they are ready. Holding people back is unfair the person, and extra work for the leader.
Prepare your people for the task, then let them go by empowering them to do the task. This lifts them up and gives you back time to work on other things.
As leaders, we need to build people. One way is to provide development and empower them to be more independent.
I am working with a group on developing their leadership skills. One of the activities I am having them do is to read through and provide their insights to each chapter of the book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. This series of post provides the basic summary of each of the Laws along with my thoughts.
Prime Leadership & Development 