When the Cat's Away - A measure of trust and empowerment
Next time a leader takes that family camping trip or the long-awaited vacation to New Zealand, be a passive observer. Are decisions delayed? Does throughput or energy wane? Are meetings canceled because no one is there to drive them? Perhaps teams start reaching out to the next level leader to guide them or maybe contact their own leader while they are OOO. There may be good reasons for these behaviors, or it may signal a lack of empowerment and trust. If this is happening on your teams, you likely have some work to do if you are striving for organizational agility. On the flip side, if you see teams coming together, openly identifying and resolving challenges, volunteering to host meetings, and perhaps communicating decisions instead of questions, the odds are that you’ve built the foundation of a self-empowered team and something powerful to build upon.
Not seeing the behaviors you’d like in this area? Wondering where to start to build trust? As a first step I’d suggest looking at the behaviors and tendencies of your managers. Even the most well-intentioned leader can fall into the trap of providing answers rather than asking questions or pursuing servant-leadership ideals by taking on problems rather than guiding teams towards solutions. These behaviors, although well intentioned, don't drive the accountability and ownership desired. Another killer of empowerment is the helicopter manager. Just like the famed helicopter parent this manager keeps up to date by being in every meeting, every standup and expecting detailed status updates from the team. For example, managers in agile stand ups kill team self-management by serving as the natural focal point of team member updates and default “answer provider”. As a manager it’s a tough balance between keeping up to date and stepping back and giving a team the room to perform. Lastly the most effective but the hardest way to build trust is by providing a safe to fail environment. It is so tempting for leaders to help teams by ensuring they aren’t allowed to fail, by “having their back”, double checking their work, and being there to catch anything that slips through the cracks. This perpetual safety net takes the edge off of a team's focus and urgency to consider the risks and potential pitfalls in their deliverables. Of course there are many more obvious ways to build or undermine trust but I’ve listed a few of the more subtle ones to get you started.
Effective performance in the absence of day to day management is a clear sign of trust. Only a sense of mutual trust can lead to an empowered team capable of acting and reacting independently and efficiently. Leaders who build a foundation of trust are the keystone of a lean, scalable and truly agile organization and it shows most plainly when they aren’t around.
Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback and personal stories of how trust and empowerment in the workplace has impacted you. A huge thank you to Jennifer Ginsberg (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlginsberg/) for her spot on feedback and edits.
Originally published on LinkedIn - December 2022
We all want a lean and scalable organization. A ninja-like organization - nimble and able to adjust to changes at all levels on a continual basis. Sounds awesome, it’s what every leader says they want, but how do you know if you are there, or at least on the right path? One way to get a temperature on your organizational nimbleness is to watch how teams perform when their leader is out of the office. The age old proverb “when the cats away the mice will play” suggests that lacking the presence of a recognized authority figure, team and individual performance will decline.
I still recall the advice of years past; manage by walking around, where the regular presence of an authoritative figure was seen as a sign of a well-run organization. Employees knew they were expected to be at their desks and working hard. Leaders of various levels would wander the floor, observing, asking for updates and seeing if those TPS reports were done yet. Visiting executives would look in the parking lot late in the afternoon observing how many cars remained, with a lack of cars resulting in some quiet words to the local management team. For many of us this may sound like an exaggeration from a management style long abandoned. After all, it was 10 years ago when I heard almost that exact observation from one of our visiting VPs, but management styles and employee attitudes change slowly, and the impact of those old ways can still be seen if you know what to look for.
Michael Oldach
Problem Solver/Servant Leader/Outcome Manager
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