Thursday, July 2, 2020

Confronting our fears on empowerment

I've been writing cover letters lately and the word "empower" keeps coming to mind (I'm doing my best to not use the word more than once per letter). Leadership articles have been talking about the need to empower employees seemingly forever, and yet we still struggle to make that a reality. Why?

To be sure, any number of leaders, when asked, will say they empower their employees. At the same time, employees seem to often lack two key aspects of empowerment:
  1. Clarity of decision-making rights -- "do I get to decide what to do or do I have to escalate?"
  2. Flow of information -- "do I have access to the information I need to make a decision?"
Not so coincidentally, these are also the top two characteristics found in companies that excel in strategy execution. After all, empowered employees should be implementing the corporate strategy and realizing its goals, right?

So why are we as leaders getting in the way of truly empowering our employees? It seems to come down to fear in multiple forms:
  1. Fear of failure -- As leaders, our performance is linked to our employees' performance. If they fail, we fail. So we try to avoid failure by stepping in at what we may think are crucial, but infrequent, intervals to "steer the ship" in the right direction.
  2. Fear of losing control -- Related to the previous point, our employees are doing most of the work on which we'll be appraised. What if they do that work differently than we might have when we held their jobs?
  3. Fear of not being perfect -- When our employees define and do the work, they may not do it as well as we did when we had that job, and the results might make us look bad to our bosses because it's not as buttoned-up as we might have done.
These fears can be palpable and employees pick up on them from our behavior. Even something as innocuous as "I'd like to review your work before you deliver it to [client|boss]" can convey the message that you don't trust the employee to do the job well. More heavy-handed examples include, "Run that decision by me next time before you act," and, "Loop me in whenever something new comes up." All of these can indicate that we as leaders are afraid, or at least unwilling, to empower employees.

And the impact? At first, a team paralyzed by fear we caused and employees who never learn to take initiative or make a decision. More importantly, an organization dependent on its leadership to make all decision, with everything being escalated. When that happens, the organization can move only at the speed and strength of a handful of people rather than at the speed and strength of everyone.

Moving past this doesn't mean letting go of those fears. Rather, we must recognize that they exist, that we have them, and that they need conscious action to work through them. Those actions might include:
  • Being open with your team and colleagues about it. Acknowledge you need their help to call you out when your behavior reflects your fears.
  • Defining and sticking to new behaviors that change the dynamic. For example, I've struggled with overly wordsmithing documents and communications to the point where my "track changes" are an inside joke. So I started to hold back on "track changes" and focused on using comments to ask questions instead.
  • Push your employees to make decisions. Sure, they can come to you; when they do, don't give them the answers! Ask questions that make them work out the best answer for them. By doing it in front of you, you can also assuage your own fears about whether their decision aligns with your thinking. 
  • Share information, even if you think it's over-sharing. Yes, information is power, and shouldn't your team be powerful? It also builds trust and confidence, minimizing the risk of sensitive information being inappropriately disclosed.
Over time (usually less than you think), your employees will consistently and confidently make the right call because they learned how to do it and were given the information and space they need for learning. As that solidifies, your team will take care of running things so you can focus on the work only you can do.

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