07 Oct Leadership is Empowering Others
I would define Leadership at it’s highest level as empowering others.
An individual, a woman or a man has been placed in a position of leadership and has been asked to lead a group. As part of that, the end result of leading a group is to accomplish some task or thing. Getting something done is the goal. That is at the far end of the start.
As one works backwards from that end goal of something accomplished or done, just before that is all the tasks and individual component parts that make up getting that thing done and all the people involved in that process and really making certain that they are in a position to be successful and doing that.
Success in doing all those tasks and ultimately achieving the end result – well, it comes down to empowering others.
People are very bright. Rarely is a person incapable. More often the reason that something doesn’t get done is either a lack of understanding or something is confusing or maybe they don’t have the right training for this particular thing.
As a leader, when this is really understood and believed – it puts you in the right frame of mind to empower others.
Maintaining a level head of understanding and compassion and care for the fact that you have this super capable person who is probably capable of doing anything and they are just missing that one little piece of information that would, if they had it, allow them to be successful.
A lot of leaders take the mindset that they need to drag the team with them. If that’s all you ever do as a leader then you are leading with the definition of “lead” being the head of a line. You are not leading in the sense of empowering a team to accomplish a goal. Doing this all the time will result in you having to do this forever because you haven’t empowered others to do things without your involvement.
A sports analogy would be like a really good coach who is going to empower the team and kind of get out of the way and let them play and let them have fun. Rather than harsh talks or sternness, it is all about being there to pick up the pieces when they fall and dusting them off and getting them back aligned with what needs to be done and making it safe for them to come and say, I don’t really know what to do and then getting them back on track getting busy doing things.