Tag: Empowerment

Jul 27

7 Traits Great Leaders Share that Enable Empowering Others

Leaders that excel at the law of empowerment recognize seven important factors and comply with those seven factors to build strong capabilities in those they lead.
Team Empowerment


7 Factors Needed to Empower Those You Lead

1. Value people. Leaders that truly value people and appreciate the benefits received through teams that demonstrate thought and skill diversity are more prone to empower others.
2. Share Vision – people flourish in environments where they feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. Leaders that share their vision focus their teams to pursue a common direction and empower them to work towards a common goal and purpose.
3. Communicate. Leaders that communicate the direction and provide clear objectives build a mental model or picture that guides their team toward success.
4. Trust people. Leaders that trust people to make the right choices find following the empowerment law much easier than those leaders reluctant to trust. I find that most people want to do the right thing. Leaders that model good leadership behaviors discover that others will also learn and model those behaviors.
5. Enable effective decision-making. Leaders that empower effectively provide the information necessary for team members to make decisions. Poor leaders shy away from the effort to create the environment for others to make decisions opting instead to withhold the decision-making authority for themselves. This simply creates bottlenecks, limits capacity, and prevents growing other strong leaders.
6. Delegate. Leaders must learn to delegate in order to empower people. Many leaders consider delegation a lose of their own power. But leaders that delegate effectively find that building other strong leaders earns them even more power and influence. Effective delegation requires delegation of authority and establishing accountability. See article Improve your Capacity with Effective Delegation for additional information.
7. Recognize and reward positive empowered behaviors. Behaviors that get rewarded get repeated. Great leaders recognize the power of genuine and well-timed praise and rewards.

I wish you well on your personal growth journey. I appreciate your additional insight, so feel free to comment to share your thoughts and experiences.

Links
12 – The Law of Empowerment
Improve your Capacity with Effective Delegation

Permanent link to this article: http://darrylpendergrass.com/Blog/7-traits-great-leaders-share-that-enable-empowering-others/

Jul 25

12 – The Law of Empowerment

“A Leader’s Potential Is Determined by Those Closest to Him”

In John C. Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (2007), John shares the law of empowerment.
Team Empowerment

Contrary to popular belief, leadership power is not a finite resource. Many act as if leadership power is a finite resource in short supply. This mindset causes one to protect their leadership power rather than distribute their power to others, which actually grows their influence and enables producing even greater results. Managers that leverage only their positional power create barriers that prevent groups and organizations from flourishing. If the barriers persist long enough, high-performing people will seek environments that enable them grow.

John shares three predominate reasons that explain the reluctance of people to share their power.

1. Job Security. As mentioned in several previous articles, many mistakenly believe that hoarding knowledge and skills ensures job security. I have personally witnessed far too many people that found the demand for their long-held knowledge and skills diminish due to shifting business needs. Hoarding knowledge and skills only serves to prevent personal growth.

2. Resistant to Change. Empowering people causes them to grow. Empowerment encourages constant change because people do not stagnate but tend to look for new ways to accomplish objectives. Innovation by definition includes the concept of change. Progress occurs by challenging the status quo resulting in constant change. As creatures of habit, people often find change difficult to embrace. Leaders must learn to embrace change and even encourage change. Great leaders by definition are change agents, the catalyst and support of change.

3. Lack of Self-Worth or Low Self-Esteem. This barrier prevents people from becoming effective leaders because they tend to be self-conscious or acutely aware and concerned about what others think about them, how they look, or whether people like them. People with low self-worth give power and control over their own lives to other people leaving little to no power left for them to empower others. On the other hand, people with a healthy sense of self-worth believe they can make a difference and actively empower other people to increase their capacity, performance, and achievement.

If you find one or more of these barriers restricting your ability to empower others, refer to the article 3 – The Law of Process for a discussion about leveraging a development process for your continued growth.

I wish you well on your personal growth journey. I appreciate your additional insight, so feel free to comment to share your thoughts and experiences.

Links
Links to other posts in this discussion on the laws of leadership.
Mind map of the 21 laws of leadership.
Introduction to the leadership laws | 1 – The Law of the Lid | 2 – The Law of Influence | 3 – The Law of Process | 4 – The Law of Navigation | 5 – The Law of Addition | 6 – The Law of Solid Ground | 7 – The Law of Respect | 8 – The Law of Intuition | 9 – The Law of Magnetism | 10 – The Law of Connection | 11 – The Law of the Inner Circle

Reference
Maxwell, John. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: Follow them and people will follow you. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Permanent link to this article: http://darrylpendergrass.com/Blog/12-the-law-of-empowerment/