So far in our Influence Skills series, we’ve discussed active listening, trustworthiness, and likability. Today, we discuss the totally growable skill of empowering.
What does ‘being empowering’ look like?
If you’ve ever managed direct reports, you know that a key part of the job is building their capability to execute on their goals. An empowering leader gives their team the resources, responsibilities, and authority to make decisions appropriate to their function and to figure out how to do their jobs in their own way.
Functional and mid-level leaders also need to empower those who don’t report to them to create and execute initiatives and strategies. Much the same as how you empower direct reports, this means delegating, holding others accountable, coaching, and leveraging personal and social motivation.
Empowering leverages the universal intrinsic motivators of purpose, autonomy, and mastery. It is a key way to inspire people at work.
Common Challenges to Empowering Others:
- Doing too much yourself instead of delegating.
- Delegating without supplying appropriate context, resources, and authority.
- Delegating jobs you should be doing or delegating without keeping an eye on progress and setting tripwires to detect when things are off track.
- Misunderstanding others’ motivations, capacities, goals, needs, and wants so you end up delegating something to them that they don’t want to do or cannot handle.
- Enlisting the wrong person for the job at hand.
- Micro-managing instead of coaching and letting go of your way of doing things.
- Failing to use social motivation to enlist commitment and hold people accountable.
- Lacking skill in holding others accountable and giving timely, balanced, and honest feedback.
One common challenge for mid-level leaders is that that they do too much themselves. Because they are being pulled in so many directions by their supervisors, peers, and team, they tend to feel overwhelmed. In response to that overwhelmed feeling, they quickly attack their action-items without thinking through what the best use of their time is and what is the best way to get the jobs done. They say it is easier for them to do it than to pass it along.
But by taking a step back and thinking through the work before diving into action, you can save a whole lot of time and energy. What work can be eliminated or postponed? What work can be automated? And what work should be delegated? It’s worth the time to delegate a task if it’s something you are not uniquely equipped to handle and that could build the skills and motivation of someone on your team. Consider it a worthwhile investment.
Six Practical Tips to Become More Empowering:
- Build your empathy and put yourself in other people’s shoes before leading them.
- Expand your definition of “team” beyond direct reports to include those you are collaborating with and relying on to create and execute the strategy.
- Understand these players’ motivations, career goals, capabilities, and needs as you enroll them into the work and before you delegate.
- Delegate effectively, matching interests to the job and supplying them with the right level of resources, context, authority, and clear expectations.
- Coach more, fix less.
- Learn to hold the “team” accountable effectively, using social motivation for those who do not report to you.
I’m working on #5 myself. It’s tough to resist the urge to fix issues, especially during crunch time. When a work challenge comes up, one best practice is to ask an open-ended question that gets your team thinking about the solutions. For example, I might ask them how we got where we are. I do not ask this judgmentally, of course! But I do ask the question with real curiosity. (Note: it is important to say “we”, so that it’s clear that you aren’t blaming but are stepping up as a thought partner). As they trace back to the root cause, the light bulbs turn on. Going forward, they may ask themselves that question, before coming to me. That saves me time and builds their own confidence and capacity to problem-solve. Win-win!
For more practical tips on how to grow your influence skills, download this free e-book.
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