When I interviewed Mr. Doug Hyde, Executive Vice President of a major architectural firm, for my book, The Power of Being All In, he told me something worth noting. His organization expected to roughly double in size over the next three to five years. Then he told me how: “We need to continue to grow our people to take on greater responsibility and become the leaders we need them to be.”
He wasn’t counting on systems, capital, or acquisitions. He was counting on people trusted with more than they carry today.
Hyde led with a servant leadership model demonstrated in his words, “each and every day in the way we coach the leaders on the team.” I’m sure executives hear a commitment like that and ask the same thing.
“If I hand my people that kind of responsibility, how do I keep control of the outcomes?”
It’s the right question, and the leaders who ask it deserve a better answer than a slogan about letting go.
The Fear Underneath
Let me say first that this fear is legitimate. You’re accountable for the results of decisions you didn’t make. That’s an uncomfortable place for any leader to live. The military hands a young Sergeant authority not because it feels generous but because the battlefield demands it, and the institution spends years building the conditions that make the handoff safe. When the Army began delegating far greater decision-making authority to junior leaders in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, we even had a name for it: “Powering Down.”
Today’s tools make the fear easier to indulge. We live in the Information Age where smart phones, tablets, and laptops let managers stay in constant contact with their people. That’s a dream come true for the micromanager, who can check in dozens of times a day and make every decision for the team. That practice isn’t healthy for growing a culture of leaders. Instead, it creates a culture of followers.
Control the Conditions, Delegate the Decisions
The third of our Big 6 Leadership Principles® is Trust and Empower, and the way out of this dilemma lives inside it. What you truly need to control isn’t the decision. It’s the conditions under which decisions get made: who decides what, at which level, within which limits, and in service of whose intent.
Set the conditions for decision-making, then stick with those conditions. Once the conditions hold, every decision made inside them is one you’ve already shaped. You don’t have to be “in the room where it happens.” (from the hit stage play and one of my favorites, Hamilton).
That’s what a Level Five Culture of Commitment runs on: team members you trust to act within your intent. It pays you back in the currency every executive claims to want. Your people are no longer lining up at the door to ask permission for every task, and you finally have time for what really matters. You can master the skills of fire prevention instead of spending your days stamping out the fires themselves.
Below is an illustration of The Decision Tree, the tool I use to set those conditions. I’ll walk through how to build one as a team so it holds, and the meeting discipline that keeps empowerment accountable without hovering. To read the rest of this article, visit this link.
Enjoy the journey!
