Leadership & Empowerment via Trust
I recently read an article from Leadership Coach Intensive, and found myself challenged in how I view empowerment. The article itself makes several interesting points, starting off with a stark reminder of where "empowerment" as a concept comes from:
“...lays out the thinking about power that most of us are familiar with; power over, competitive, individualistic, dominant, values fortitude and withholds praise or encouragement. This version of power permeates every facet of our society from how we raise children to how we structure organizations...What I often hear from leaders is that those with the power (typically those highest in the hierarchy) should empower others, by somehow giving them some of that power. The implication is that some people only get to have power when someone else chooses to share it. This is that old definition of empowerment as authority or power given to someone to do something...What if new power could be all about partnership, collaboration, relationship, empathy, inclusion and listening?”
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The idea of empowerment is so engrained in our societal structure, even in the case of using modalities like results to make a case for promotions, according to LCI. "By doing X, you get Y." Ultimately, this points to the fact we've build systems that value people based on achievement and status, creating a system of power structure that justifies the notion of "empowerment." Quite literally this concept means person A has power they give to person B at the discretion of person A.
...and we consider this idea of empowerment natural and acceptable.
Now, we can't completely unwind the way empowerment has manifested in our culture. Although there are a lot of great benefits the concept of empowerment has had, especially within diversity, equity and inclusion work, it does unfortunately reinforce the concept of power that will continue to manifest. What we can do, however, is update our own ways of working with our teams as leaders, and remove the idea of a power hand-off to truly create "empowerment" in its altruistic form.
LCI posits that this redefinition starts with us and our intentional redefining of the idea of empowerment. Being mindful of how power plays into your one-on-one interactions with your teams - how you ask questions so that it's not a teacher-student dynamic, whether you're enabling your team members to lead conversations. But, I would add to this thought and model an approach that points back to trust-building.
In Leadership Lessons from a Team Captain, I discuss empowerment via trust, and the interesting part is that trust and empowerment are a two way street. Giving trust is a form of empowerment and enables innovation and productivity. When trust is given, a teammate can run their own experiments, create their own path. On the flip side, empowering someone builds trust and I love David Huntoon's take on it: "it builds confidence in their capacity to execute your collective mission and goals, establishes essential trust in an organization, and creates the secondary level of leadership necessary when you are not present for key decisions so that the organization continues."
Notice the difference in empowerment via trust as opposed to empowerment as a power hand-off. Did you happen to catch it? Trust starts within ourselves. We must do our own headwork, have discipline and become vulnerable to those around us (the person we're trusting). WE are the vulnerable ones when we choose to trust. In contrast, empowerment as a power hand-off puts us in the driver seat and still requires that we've controlled the direction of the dynamic. It's a backwards way of thinking about leadership and requires we unlearn some of what has been engrained in our minds since childhood and rethink what leadership looks like.
If you want to learn more about building trust within your team with empathy, preorder your copy of Leadership Lessons and connect with me to discuss.