Welcome to the Liberating Teams podcast. I'm Holly Breeding team psychology practitioner and org effectiveness consultant. Every week around here, we dismantle the outdated hierarchical leadership systems that keeps leaders like you stuck in the weeds and break down how to build a self-managed team that thrives without you at the center.
Because when your team has the clarity systems and ownership, they need to lead themselves. You finally get to lead strategically. It's time to liberate the way you lead.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Okay. If you're listening to this right now and you did not listen to the last episode, all about why delegation isn't the answer, and diving into how instead of delegating tasks, we need to be transferring ownership of outcomes to our team, pause. Go listen to that episode and then come back and listen to this.
'cause this is part two. We are diving deeper into understanding how do we actually empower our team, equip them with the context, the authority, the clarity they need to truly own those outcomes. So, of course, me being all about creating self-managed teams and getting teams out of the weeds, it is so, so common for people to come to me and say, my team's just not empowered.
They're smart, they're capable, but they're not empowered. They're not stepping up, they're not owning the work like I know they can. But they just aren't. And I think it's common for us to think empowerment is like a will issue. Like they lack the, the motivation, the confidence whatever it is to step up and own this.
I gave it to them. Now it's on them to step up. And go after it. But you know, me and soft skills, I really think that empowerment is less about will. Sure will is a part of it, but I think a lot of the times what's missing is not the will, and it's more so that we have not equipped them to own the work.
Sure, maybe we've shared with them the outcomes that they own, but did we give them everything they need to truly own that outcome to run after it? We gave them the finish line, Hey, here's what you're trying to achieve. But then we put them in mud boots with a 50 pound backpack, you know, in the pouring rain and said, now run.
Because we didn't actually equip them to do it. And we're like, well, they don't have the will. They don't have the drive. No, they're just running through the mud with a 50 pound backpack trying to get there because we haven't set them up for success. They have the will. They're just burning it out, trying to get through the BS obstacles we've put in their way.
So of course there there's going to be a point where they're gonna get tired. When you're not gonna see as much enthusiasm to get to that finish line because they're jumping through hoops. So our goal as leaders when we are transferring ownership of work to our team is we need to make sure we've given them the appropriate equipment and we've cleared the path for them to achieve it.
'cause when we're handing off outcomes, our role as the leader is to step up and out. We are now the strategic advisor. We're the ones who are creating the space for them to thrive. That's the true role of a strategic leader. So what I teach my Liberated leaders to do is once we've developed the core outcomes, every single individual understands their three to five core outcomes is we do this role ownership audit.
So we make sure that every single person on the team understands, because that's the first piece of empowerment, is clarity. They actually have to understand. What is my role? What am I responsible for? What are my guardrails? What are, what are the areas that I can operate within and have full autonomy over this work?
Versus where do I need to escalate? They need to have clarity around what they're responsible for. The next thing that we talk about in the role ownership audit is context. Do they have all the knowledge they need?
So with My Liberated Leaders, we actually walk through this process of doing a role ownership audit with the members of this team. They have a template that they give to their team, and they fill out, what do I need to take ownership over my role? And it's broken down into different sections around what teams truly need to feel empowered.
And so they go through and they really do the critical thinking because again, self-managed team, we're not doing it for them. We're their strategic advisor, their thought partner. So we put the onus on them to think through it, and then they come to the table with those thoughts and we have a conversation about it, and then I fully empower and enable them to go after that.
Because that's my role as their strategic advisor. So that's just what I just wanted to highlight, that really clear example about how we approach things in Liberated Leader, every single thing is designed for you to practice that self-managed team, that empowered team, they own it. We are the strategic advisor.
So today what I'm gonna go through is just a few of the core areas at that high level that we talk about when doing a role audit and how. Those, what are the core elements required to truly empower someone to own their work? So the first one is going to be clarity. They have to truly understand what they are responsible for and what boundaries they're able to have full authority to act within.
So a lot of the times people not stepping up and owning their work is because they just don't understand. They feel this fear of, am I gonna step on someone's toes? Am I not doing enough? Am I doing too much? You know, I heard so and so's kind of doing this work. Is this overlap? Should I not be doing with it?
There's so much, unknown that they get paralyzed from taking action. Well, if I don't think I own it or if I don't know that I own it, or I think maybe someone else owns it, then I'm not gonna run after it. Right. Versus if you very clearly say, this is yours. You are responsible for it, then okay, now I'm going.
So it seems so silly, and even if you think like I've given them their three to five outcomes. Cool. But do they understand them? Can they repeat it back to you? Do you guys have the same understanding of what success looks like? Do you have the same understanding of what boundaries they're supposed to act within, like full autonomy versus where they need to come to you?
So let's dive a little bit deeper. When I talk about what I mean when I talk about clarity. So one, they need to understand how their role actually contributes to your bigger strategy. So you should have a clear vision. This is what we're trying to achieve this year in our team, and they should know their role in achieving that vision.
Now, not everyone needs to be a superstar and have like a giant role in achieving the vision. Every single quarter. For some people your role is a major player versus some people, they're in more of a support role.
They're supporting the major players it's not their time to be in that driver's seat. And that's great because now this is your time to maybe work internally on your own team's processes. So then when you do step into a major player role, you are ready to go. They need to understand their purpose in the vision.
They also need to understand those three to five outcomes their role is responsible for. And a great way to make sure there's clarity on this is to have a conversation about what would it look like. If you succeeded in achieving these three to five outcomes, what would be different? What metrics would we see change?
What behaviors would we see change? What would customers be saying? What would our stakeholders be saying? Asking these follow-up questions is really gonna help them understand it's really going to bring to life. What will be different when they achieve these things? So they have full clarity on the results they're expected to deliver.
They also need to understand their guardrails. So what boundaries are they free to operate within? Where are they able to run without you? I like to think about these as like buffers in a bowling lane. It's like you can throw the ball and test things out within these boundaries and it's okay 'cause it will always bounce back and it'll be fine.
But once we go outside of these boundaries, that's where things can go haywire. That's where we have the opportunity to create major problems, irreversible damage, and so those are things where I'm gonna need sign off or say on this. And we have an entire section and liberated leader that talks about the different types of guardrails and how to define them and all of that.
But it really comes down to just providing context around, here's your lane that you can operate within with. Without having to come to me for approval for review. And so for those of you guys who are, you know, maybe a little bit nervous to start handing off ownership or outcomes to your team, you're gonna have a lot of guardrails at this point, and that's okay.
But make sure that we're setting guardrails and we're reviewing them, say at a quarterly pace, so that way we can say, okay, I feel really confident with how you've been operating. Working on budgets less than 15,000. So now let's up the cap. It's like raising your credit card limit. You've seen that they were responsible with that level of spending, so now we're upping the guardrail.
So that's a really good way to think about, starting to build trust with delegating outcomes when maybe you're still building that trust level with your team. And then the last thing when it comes to clarity is they have to understand how their role fits into the bigger picture. Who are they dependent on?
Who do they need information or deliverable or an outcome from in order to do their work? And this might be internal to your team, or it might be external, it might be other departments. It may even be external vendors. And then who's relying on them? I don't think we spend enough time talking about how work flows through our teams, where those handoffs are, how we're dependent on one another to get work done, and this is what breeds that siloed mentality of.
I just need to get done. My piece in the puzzle not happening on a self-managed team. Because if we take that mentality, who's the glue holding all these roles together, who's the one connecting the dots, putting the puzzle pieces together at the end of the day, that's you. That's why we have so many leaders buried in the weeds is 'cause they're the glue between the teams, they're the roles.
I especially see this at higher levels of leadership. When you get into leading departments, you become the glue between all of those teams within your department. They're not talking to each other. They're responsible for understanding their dependencies, who they depend on and who they're affecting, and building those relationships.
That's why we have an entire section on handoffs and how co we're coordinating work between teams and even how we're building relationships, how we're building the ability to give feedback and handle conflict between these roles without you having to be the mediator. That's why we have a whole section on that in the self-managed system because it is so, so important.
So that's clarity. So now do you understand the level of clarity I'm talking about? It's not just, here's your job description. It's here's your role in achieving the vision. Here's your, like the outcomes you're responsible for, the measures of your success. Here's the guardrails within which, and you can operate which without me, here's where you need to come to me.
Here's where your, you fit into the bigger picture in this team, how workflows to you and where your work goes. That's the level of clarity I'm talking about. That gives them the confidence to step up and own the work because they understand the bigger picture and how they fit into it.
Clarity breeds confidence. When people have the utmost clarity around what they're responsible for, they're 10 times more likely to run after it. Okay? So that's just one of the pieces that we talk about. The other two that we talk about when it comes to empowering teams to truly own their work is going to be context and authority.
So one of the things that I did in, spending a decade consulting within corporate, is the first part of my process. Whenever a team came to me and was like, I'm struggling with this issue, I would go and I would interview the team members.
So we would have focus groups, or I would do individual interviews and understand why this was happening. And so often this came up when it came to lack of empowerment. The leader would say, the team's not owning their work. They're not empowered, they're not, you know, problem solving. They're not thinking strategically.
And then I go talk to the team and they're like, I don't have the context or the authority to own my work. I'm getting told to run after it yet I feel like my hands are handcuffed behind my back. It's like you've handed me a map, but you cut off three fourths of it and just gave me like a little one piece and I'm trying to figure it out.
So what that looks like is we gave them ownership of it, but we said, you know. I have to be the one in the meeting because everyone else in the meeting has a director title. So you have to have this level of title to be in it. So I'm gonna be in the meeting. I'll come to you and give you the information you need, and then if you need approval on something or you need to know something, you just come to me.
We create a giant game of corporate telephone. Y'all, this is so, so common, and even the leader, you can have the best intentions, but we fall into this trap because it's corporate conditioning and we think we have to be in it because we have the title. But what happens is now our teams, they're getting secondhand information and they're getting it at a delay.
And so of course they're struggling to operate because there's a big difference of me handing down information and then funneling your thoughts and ideas up the pipeline versus being in the room. There's a huge difference. So if they don't have a seat at the table, then of course they're struggling 'cause we're giving them that tiny piece of the map and they're missing the bigger picture.
They don't have access to information. Gatekeeping is rampant in corporate culture, even unintentionally. We don't realize as leaders how much access to information we have. And I'm not just talking about meetings, I'm talking about those, you know, leader only email threads. I'm talking about the leader only interweb pages.
I'm talking about the networking forums. You have access to the water cooler conversations. You're, you are privy to just the peer-to-peer connections you have. We as leaders have access to so much information and it's not un, it's understandable how we're not always able to think about in those moments, okay?
So and so needs to know this, okay? That's impacting so-and-so's job. We have an entire template in Liberated Leader about the information you should be collecting and how to collect it for your team. Because it's so critical for them to have that context in order for them to understand what they need to truly own their work.
So we need to give them access to the bigger picture, to the full book. This looks like meetings. This looks like forms. This looks like the email chains if you are owning the outcome. I don't wanna be CC'd on the email chain. And if I really, really have to be CC'd on the email chain because it's, could be potentially, detrimental.
If we made a mistake on this issue or on this topic, then okay, but I'm not gonna be the one responding. I'm there as the strategic advisor, but you're the point of contact, even if the other points of contacts are directors, you are the owner. I empower my team to own outcomes.
They are not TaskRabbits and therefore I treat them as such. They are the owners, they're the experts. They don't need a leadership title to be. So we have to give them the context because context directly feeds into the last thing that I'm gonna talk about, which is authority.
They actually have to have the ownership over the work, and they can't make good decisions. They can't come up with good ideas, they can't come up with the strategy if they don't have the context. It's unfair to ask that of them if they don't have that, and your team knows when they don't have it. They know and it gives them anxiety because we're asking them to make decisions.
We're asking them to problem solve. We're asking them to come up with solutions and ideas, and they're like, okay, but I got one chapter in the book. Everything else is ripped out and I know you have it, so what am I gonna do? I'm constantly going to be coming to you because you are the keeper of the information.
You've got the rest of the pages. So when we really hand off outcomes, we have to hand off the context with it, and we also have to hand off the authority. So when I'm talking about authority, I'm talking about decision making. Another thing I heard so much in those feedback forums is. I used to come with ideas and decisions, but I got so tired of putting so much thought and time into developing them only for them to be shot down.
So I just stopped. And , for some of us, we need to take a hard look and ask, are we the leader who struggles? With seeing that , there's more than one right way to achieve an outcome. And just because it wasn't done your way doesn't mean it's not the right way.
Or for some of us, we need to recognize the history of the members . They don't feel. They have the permission to operate in that way because they were in a team that never allowed that.
It was the leader who came up with the ideas. You simply execute. I don't wanna hear your opinions. And when we've been in teams like that and we've been conditioned that they don't want our opinions, and if we give our opinions, they'll be shot down or worse, we'll get a slap on the hand. It's hard to break out of that.
So recognize where could you potentially be sending them signals that, hey, when you make decisions, they're constantly gonna be overridden? Or did they come for an environment where them providing ideas was frowned upon? And how can we build psych safety where. When I ask you to own an outcome, that means truly owning the outcome and making the decisions and coming up with the plan and how we're gonna go about it, and what we're gonna prioritize and solving the problems That all comes with it, and you have full authority to do so.
Now, I am your strategic advisor, which means I do expect that you are using me in that capacity. You are coming to me in those decisions and saying, here's what I'm thinking. How would you poke holes in this? What maybe am I not seen? And we talk all about in liberated leader the different types and and roles in decision making and how you can create guardrails in your decision making as well.
But the goal here is instead of you being the authority, the gold stamp to say, pass approved, how can you instead be that advisor? You come to me for advice, so I don't have to approve the decision, but you're expected to come to me for advice, for me to poke holes, for me to maybe realize where I didn't give you context that you need to have.
And ask you if that would change your decision. And then the same thing when it comes to solving problems and ideating the strategy. They're coming up with the plan. I'm the advisor. I'm poking holes, I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm helping provide context so they can make the best decision forward.
So your action item for today is once you've gone ahead and made sure every single person on your team has those three to five outcomes, do a little audit. Have them think through, do I have the clarity, the context, and the authority I need to fully operate and own in my role?
And it is our job as leaders, like I said at the beginning of this episode, to fully equip them to have ownership in those roles, which means challenging the status quo over who's in a meeting or who's on an email chain, or who can make a decision. It means getting them access to those things influencing on their behalf.
If you guys want an entire episode on that, we can talk about it. DM me. It means accepting that there's more than one right answer. Even if it's not done our way, it means entrusting them with the decision rights and continuing to push decision making down to the lowest possible level. That's our role.
If we're gonna ask them to own the work, how can we fully empower them to do so? Let's go do the work.
Thank you for listening to the Liberating Teams podcast. If this episode hit home for you, don't forget to share it with another leader. Or if you've got 10 seconds, drop a five star review and it would mean the world to me so we can liberate more teams together. And if you try something for today's episode, come tell me how it went.
DM me on Instagram over at Liberating Teams, and I'd love to chat more about it. Now. Let's go change the world of work. One liberated team at a time.
