Leadership Methods Necessary to Empower Employees and Build Strong Teams ANDRES MANUEL OLIVARES MIRANDA
INSECURITY IS THE ENEMY One of the biggest reasons many leaders never delegate or empower employees is because they are insecure. Some are afraid that one of their employees will outshine them. Others are afraid their employees won’t do the job correctly. A secure leader won’t mind if someone they lead ends up exceeding them. They’ll take that as a sign of their leadership, not the other way around. For those who micromanage because he doesn’t trust his employees to do the job well, they either hired wrong or trained wrong. Both are the leader’s responsibility and should be addressed.
ANDRES MANUEL OLIVARES MIRANDA
EXTREME OWNERSHIP That being said, even as a leader empowers and delegates authority to others on their team, they should never relinquish the ultimate responsibilities of the team and their outcomes. Jocko Willink wrote a book called Extreme Ownership where he recalls his leadership experiences as a Navy SEAL officer. He recounts a major failure his team suffered and how he learned how to take ownership of his team as the leader, regardless of who actually messed up. Former U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan once said, “you can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.� Building strong teams still means the leader takes full responsibility and extreme ownership of the organization.
ANDRES MANUEL OLIVARES MIRANDA
Growth Mindset Carol Dweck once spoke at the TED conference about “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve.” It talked about re-framing failure as opportunities to improve instead of a statement about one’s abilities or character. A leader who empowers employees well will expect failure, especially in the beginning. Nobody excels right out of the gate. Most people have a learning curve, and a strong leader will build that into his processes for building his team.
ANDRES MANUEL OLIVARES MIRANDA
BUILDING CONSENSUS This can be truly difficult for a strong type-A leader, but building consensus is one of the best ways to empower a team. When people are allowed into the decision-making process and are invited to give their input, they become way more engaged in executing on those decisions. These are just a few ways that strong leaders empower their employees and ultimately build strong teams around them to accomplish their mission.
ANDRES MANUEL OLIVARES MIRANDA