In our series on leadership attributes, we now look at how leaders empower others. John Maxwell writes about the Law of Empowerment in his classic book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, indicating that if leaders want to be successful, they have to be willing to empower others. He tells us that only secure leaders give power to others. One reason this is so is that secure leaders are not worried about team members achieving more, or going further in their career than they do. In fact, that’s exactly what a servant leader wants to happen.
Maxwell tells us that to lead others well, leaders in all areas – business, church, sports, non-profits, government, education, etc. – must help others to reach their potential. In other words, lifting others up, lifts you up.
But how do leaders go about empowering others? There’s a lot that we could say about this, but in this article, we’ll look at just three thoughts. They are:
- Maxwell writes that the main ingredient for empowering others is a high belief in people. If you believe in others, they will believe in themselves. This will give them confidence as they take on the additional responsibilities that you have given them. Knowing that a leader believes in them can help make the difference between success and failure.
- Stretch Assignments. Where I worked, we would give emerging leaders what we called “stretch assignments”. This was work that was above and beyond what they were currently doing. The work was challenging enough that success was not guaranteed, and at times the emerging leader would fail. Assigning the emerging leaders this work demonstrated that leaders believed they could complete it successfully, but it would be a stretch for them. A good leader will not only empower an emerging leader by assigning a stretch effort, but be there to provide direction, answer questions and provide feedback throughout the duration of the stretch assignment.
- Delegation, not Dumping. A way in which leaders can maximize their effectiveness for their organization, as well as develop future leaders is through effective delegation. When a leader sees leadership potential in an individual, they look for work to take off of their own plate and delegate it to others. I’ve seen a leader in our church do this effectively. During a time in which we were short-staffed, they approached others to see if they would be willing to step up to take on important work that needed to be done. They demonstrated their belief in the individuals to take on this work, which for them would be a stretch assignment. The leader was there to provide direction, correction and feedback as well, not just dumping the work on others to get it off of their own plate. This resulted in not only empowering others within the church, helping them to grow in their own leadership, but actually maximized the leaders’ own leadership. This ties in with the Law of Explosive Growth, in which Maxwell writes that if you want to maximize your leadership, help your organization reach its potential, and do that as quickly as possible, you must develop leaders. One way to do that is to empower emerging leaders.
Effectively empowering emerging leaders is an important trait for leaders. What else would you add to what I’ve written?
This is an Adapted Excerpt From My Book “A LEADER WORTH FOLLOWING:
40 Key Leadership Attributes and Applications to Master”.