What does it mean to empower people?
I was working with a senior leader the other day who had lead many a company, but when I asked about leadership skills, they kept saying they empowered people but couldn’t explain what they did to empower people.
When we hit this roadblock, we went through a thought exercise to breakdown ways this leader actully empowered people.
If you are a good leader, you empower people but you may not have taken the time to think through exactly how you do that. In preparing for interviews, you need to be able to do that.
Empowering Leaders
Set Strategy
Assist in Goal Setting
Guided Self-Discovery
Feedback
Set Strategy
When we determine what we do or don’t do, we set a strategy. This topic is worth its own post (or 10). For the moment, know that leaders set a strategy that a team can work within. A good strategy will set boundaries and barriers within which their team can work.
Assist in Goal Setting
Goal setting can be overwhelming for many PMs. A good leader helps set goals through example. A good leader should do three things to help with goal setting:
Set a goal you want to reach and show your team how it is done.
Assist your team in writing the goal through brainstorming and feedback, not dictation.
Start Simple, it is okay to let your team fail a little. Start with a simple goal quarter-over-quarter and let them see and reflect on how the goal was accomplished or missed.
Guided Self-Discovery
My ski coaches love to tell me they don’t coach, they provide moments of guided self-discovery. I love that approach. In the case of empowering teams, guiding discovery is one of the most powerful things a leader can do. It can take many forms:
Give stretch assignments
Putting them in the right rooms at the right times
Giving them exposure to places they can fail fast and learn
The list goes on…
Feedback
It is important to believe in supportive and constructive feedback. Giving feedback early and often in a safe space is crucial to empowering your teams. An obscene number of managers hold most feedback until it is too late. You need to ask your team members how and when they prefer to receive feedback. Some people like it in real (or near-real time). Others only like feedback at the beginning or end of a day as they know how much they might overthink it. You can show you are open to feedback and self-reflection by sharing your Read Me document.
