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You Think You’re Empowering Your Team – Here’s Why It’s Not Working
53 Plays29 days ago
In this episode, I chat with Marcus Dimbleby, a former military officer, Marcus has been helping organizations build adaptive leadership, resilience, and engagement since retiring from the Royal Air Force in 2013 through his work at Effective Direction.
We explore why so many leaders struggle to create empowered teams and what's really needed to bridge the gap between intent and execution.
Have a listen to learn practical strategies to truly empower your team, drive engagement, and improve results.
Key takeaways
- Why simply telling your team they're empowered isn't enough.
- What are the key signs that your team may actually be disempowered, even if they don't say it?
- Why buzzwords like empowerment and psychological safety often fail to have an impact in organisations.
- Are you, as a leader, truly enabling your team to thrive, or just using the language of empowerment?
- How active listening transforms the way you engage with your team and improves their performance.
- What causes resistance to empowerment, and how can leaders build trust to overcome it?
Resources:
- Connect with Marcus and learn more about his work at https://www.effectivedirection.com/
Contact Me:
- Book your free 30-minute discovery call with me here:
https://calendly.com/visiblydifferentcorine/1-2-hr-discoverycall - Download my Leader's Guide to Increasing Your Impact, Influence & Free Time https://www.visibly-different.co.uk/increasing-your-impact/
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might benefit and don't forget to leave a rating and review!
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Transcript
ROI Through People Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
a
00:00:03
Speaker
Focus on ah ROI equals people go down. Focus on people equals ah ROI goes up. And by saying, i do that, Marcus, they're all empowered. Doesn't cut it.
00:00:16
Speaker
The organizations we're working with are realizing that they've got to put people back at the heart, engage them, enable them, empower them. They'll then execute. You've then unleashed your people to do the right thing.
Podcast Introduction with Corinne Hines
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome to the show. I'm Corinne Hines and this is the Visible Leader Podcast.
00:00:40
Speaker
I take a practical approach to leadership, unpacking the art and science of leading effectively. And together with my lovely guests, I explore topics like showing vulnerability without losing credibility and how to rethink performance by ditching those appraisals.
Challenges in Empowerment
00:01:04
Speaker
The team keep escalating decisions up to the SLT, but I've empowered them and I do not know why they don't just step up. If you've been in that team that was supposed to have stepped up, or if you've uttered those words yourself and are very frustrated why it didn't work, then you are going to love this episode.
Meet Marcus Stimbleby
00:01:26
Speaker
I had a conversation with Marcus Stimbleby, who is a former military fighter controller and red teamer. After retiring from the RAF in 2013, he went on to work for a global consultancy, he led major business transformations, and he now focuses on enabling organizations to deal with the complexities of today's modern world by unleashing their people to do great things.
00:01:53
Speaker
We talked about all things empowerment, what it actually means, why leaders think they're doing it, why they are so often frustrated that it's not working, and importantly, what they should be doing instead.
Defining Empowerment & Its Pitfalls
00:02:09
Speaker
I hope you enjoy the conversation. a
00:02:15
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Marcus. Really nice to have you here. Corinne, it's great to be here. I've been following since you started and it's always interesting to see what your guests come up with in the conversations you have. So it's an honor to be a part of it, finally.
00:02:29
Speaker
Wow. Let's see if you can be the best guest, Marcus, to win that competition. No pressure, No pressure. Well, we are here to talk about empowerment. Nobody wants a disempowered team, Marcus.
00:02:43
Speaker
Correct. I've never met a leader who's desired that or necessarily thinks they have it. However, it frequently shows up that there are symptoms that would indicate that. Funny how that happened.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah. So there's a mismatch here. Now, I think the first question has to be the word
Why Empowerment Efforts Fail
00:03:03
Speaker
empowerment. I must admit, I'm a little bit allergic to it, but let's define it from your perspective. So what does empowerment mean?
00:03:11
Speaker
Like you, I like to be a bit of a pedant when it comes to words. So I did my homework today. I know what empowerment is, but I got the the dictionary definition out for today. So we can all be really clear because that's one of the most important things I think in anything in business is having that understanding of what we're all talking about.
00:03:26
Speaker
So empowerment, authority or power given to someone to do something. So the leaders want something done by someone.
00:03:37
Speaker
So you give them the authority and the power to do that. So it's pretty straightforward, isn't it? So why that isn't happening is one of the conundrums right now, which I'm hoping we're going to explore and pick apart today.
00:03:48
Speaker
Absolutely. So it sounds quite straightforward, is often bandied around as something people did desire in their teams.
Barriers to Effective Empowerment
00:03:57
Speaker
ah The first place I feel like starting is, what do you see as the main barriers to it actually being something that we see more frequently?
00:04:09
Speaker
First off, I think like many things that we could talk about that's really happened probably more in the last sort of 10 to 20 years as what I call these fads or these shiny things come along and we call it buzzword bingo.
00:04:22
Speaker
You know, we've got agile, we've got psychological safety, we've got empowerment. And these come out as very well-intended, well-meaning things. And it's like any tool, if you use it well in the context of which it was supposed to be used, it's phenomenal.
00:04:39
Speaker
What happens though is it becomes a very easy thing to just throw out there. So an executive, a leader, team manager can go, right, you're all empowered. you know i've I've used that that word I read on the train coming in this morning, the latest Harvard Business Review, and it says we should be doing this as leaders. So that's what I'm doing.
00:04:55
Speaker
And that's like giving someone a power tool they've never used before and then complaining when they've soared your kitchen table in half.
Implementing Empowerment Successfully
00:05:02
Speaker
You've got to make sure that everything in preparation to deliver the empowerment or the capability you're offering is in place.
00:05:11
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And i talk about three things of anything, not just empowerment, but we all normally understand why something needs to happen. We tend to have hopefully a good idea what needs to be done.
00:05:23
Speaker
But when it comes to the how you physically do that, that's when it starts to fall apart. And I think that's where the whole empowerment thing is. And you've seen a lot of this banded down from the top of the house where, right, you're all empowered to do X, off you go.
Impact of Poor Empowerment on Teams
00:05:38
Speaker
And then X is the something delivered by Y. And Y, funny old thing, doesn't deliver X on time and all sorts of things go wrong. And the executive get frustrated because I've empowered you all. Why aren't you doing this?
00:05:49
Speaker
And the Y team become frustrated because they're not actually empowered. And we'll unpick more of what that actually means as we go forward. So I think that to me is the crux of the problem today. And you can do the same with psychological safety. You can do the same with agile safety.
00:06:03
Speaker
and many other words out there that are just becoming almost ah lip service to what is a good thing. And then that frustrates me because agile is getting a bashing. Psychological safety gets used and abused.
00:06:15
Speaker
Empowerment has become, as you said, I don't like to use the word because we all know what it means. It's like woke, isn't it? What woke used to be to what woke is. These words have morphed over time because of the perspective that people now have of them because of the misuse of them along the way.
00:06:31
Speaker
m Absolutely. And it's funny how you can just insert that different words in, but i've I've done this with them. We have a cycle towards safety in our team. The thing is the intent behind a lot of this is good.
00:06:43
Speaker
the place it came from, they want that, but the how is missing. And that means that you have this end result. And I think the end result would be useful to start with.
00:06:56
Speaker
I'd like to understand your perspective on the symptoms that we both see that would show that people in the team, the how's missing the mark.
00:07:07
Speaker
what What do you see show up? Absolutely. i love this. So let's, we've started with what it means and how people are cascading that. Let's go to the end state. So what are we saying? Ultimately disengaged people.
00:07:19
Speaker
What does that mean? Drop in productivity. increase in attrition, people leaving their roles, people becoming disenfranchised. There's a phrase, another phrase that's come out, quiet quitting.
00:07:30
Speaker
So people are coming to work with good intent, wanting to do stuff, but not enabled to do so. So they're just like coming in, doing the bare minimum, getting away with what they need to do and going home. They're not coming in with that A game that you want your players to come in with. they're not coming in to go that extra mile. They're not coming in enthused because of the cascade that's happened before that.
Workplace Engagement & ROI
00:07:51
Speaker
And what does that mean? you look across industry today and Gallup have done, as usual, their brilliant workplace ah surveys. Workplace engagement globally is at 23%. that means of people are coming to work disengaged.
00:08:07
Speaker
of that seventy seven percent eighteen percent are coming actively sabotageaging the workplace And it doesn't mean that those are bad people. They're probably coming because they're the ones who are most frustrated trying to make change and trying to air these grievances.
00:08:20
Speaker
That's globally. Disappointingly, Europe is the lowest with 13%. So 87% of people in Europe are disengaged. And both Google and Apple have done surveys over the years where they found that every 1% increase in engagement equals 1% increase in ah ROI.
00:08:40
Speaker
And again, what are we always focusing on? What are the execs who are empowering their teams focusing on every quarter? r ROI, the figures, the delivery speed, the numbers of stuff in production.
00:08:52
Speaker
And what's happening is, and I've got a little equation that focus on ah ROI equals people go down. Focus on people equals um ROI goes up. So it's going against everything you've been taught in your 1980s business school MBA and switching and focusing on your people.
00:09:10
Speaker
And by saying, I do that, Marcus, they're all empowered, doesn't cut it. That's not the how, that's just the sentence. That's what we're seeing. And when we're seeing it across industry, know people aren't staying in jobs long. Why not?
00:09:22
Speaker
Because these companies aren't retaining those people in the right way. And, If you looked at the survey, you know and and I did a follow survey on LinkedIn about this, it says, okay, what's the number one reason these people who are quietly quitting
Why Employees Leave
00:09:34
Speaker
want? What's the reason why they're leaving?
00:09:36
Speaker
And most people say it's money, remuneration. And it's not. yeah Yeah, and it's not that. When you talk to these people, money comes third. And the first thing is recognition and professional development is number two. So they want to be able to come to work.
00:09:52
Speaker
They want to do good stuff and be recognized for doing good stuff. And they want to progress. I worked with one big oil and gas company. And then again, the number one response for that was the teams were, we're not professionally developing, let alone personally.
00:10:05
Speaker
And the expectation is I come in, I do this job and they want me to sit there and do the job for 10 years. That's not going to happen. That's a nice to have if that's your model, but that's not going to work today. And it doesn't work for people. You want to do that, stick a robot in the chair.
00:10:19
Speaker
And that's where the use of AI and automation is going to be effective. But if you want quality output, and you wanna put a quality individual in there, then you have to engage that person for what you hired them for. Steve Jobs one-on-one, isn't it? Don't employ great people and then tell them what to do.
00:10:34
Speaker
And again, we worked with a big bank. They had mass recruitment of awesome young
Underutilization of Talent
00:10:39
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individuals. These super sharp and know graduates, uber skilled up, they'd come in. And then within 18 months to two years, 80% were leaving.
00:10:48
Speaker
And we went and did the sort of surveys of all the exit interviews. And that was the same thing. It was like, you recruited me to come in and do X, but then you stopped me doing X at every turn point.
00:10:59
Speaker
Every time I try to be the superhero that I am and do what you hired me for and the skills that I have to unleash on your business and do greatness, you stopped me and gave me some mundane job. Also, no, that's that's out of your pay bracket. You shouldn't be doing that.
00:11:12
Speaker
So I think that's what we're seeing and that manifests into an um unhappy nation.
Empowerment & Mental Health
00:11:17
Speaker
You look at and suicide rates are the highest they've been in executives. Mental health issues between the years of 18 and 30 are skyrocketing. So all of these things are interlinked. We can't not take a holistic view of this.
00:11:30
Speaker
But I think that's the whole purpose of empowerment has to be physically constructed and enabled in the right way, which we can discuss much more as we go forward. Otherwise, these are the outcomes that you're going to see.
00:11:42
Speaker
And if I was listening to this and I was leading a team, if I then started questioning myself and thinking, oh my God, I've been saying the E word, is it being felt and and and am I getting the results?
Detecting Dysfunction in Teams
00:11:55
Speaker
If I was a leader now, what would I look for? What would I kind of go, right, I'm going in, I'm going to see my team or whatever, or I'm a big, big team of teams. What might I look for that would be symptomatic of this that I could put my hands around?
00:12:10
Speaker
A few things are going to be quite apparent. you You'll taste it and feel it when you walk in. You know, culture is palpable. And I've been in an organization. One of the things i do is a sort of couple of days deep dive where I just meander around the company, walk into coffee bars, meet people after work for for drinks, and just sense the vibe, sense how people are feeling, what they're saying, the comments.
00:12:31
Speaker
So you should very quickly, if you've got awareness, pick up on that. You'll start to see the productivity figures and what people are expected to be doing to what is happening. You'll maybe start to see just small things slipping because the discipline, when people are in this mode, it's not through intent, it's just how it is.
Value of Dissent in Teams
00:12:51
Speaker
When you've got malaise, when you're feeling down, the little things start to let go as well. So you might see the standards of the business, things not getting done on time, submissions of reports,
00:13:01
Speaker
whatever you're doing from a sort of procurement perspective, reporting, all of these little things will be micro indicators that are going to start to let you know. And hopefully going a few loud dissenters in the room as well, who are going to tell you what you want to hear.
00:13:15
Speaker
There's a great quote by Daniel Kahneman who says, you have to protect your dissenters. So what tends to happen with these people who are frustrated, they speak up and then either they get shut down or they get fired or they lose their bonus and they go silent.
00:13:28
Speaker
But those are the people, those are those 18%. Those are those disruptors who are actually the most passionate. That's why they're disrupting. That's why they're speaking up because they care and they've they'd become so frustrated that the only thing they can do is outlet via vocal consternation against what's going on. So if you enable those people in the right way, that's how you're going to shift this.
Keys to Successful Empowerment
00:13:50
Speaker
But they're the sort of things that you would see as a ah team manager or leader in that position.
00:13:55
Speaker
I want to get into the meat of what you know we can talk about, which is the how. Mm-hmm. Can we just start with the how not? Like what when people think empowerment, what is the first things that they may do, which is using the E word, but as mismatch?
00:14:14
Speaker
Great first question into this one, because this is the majority of how it happens. So they've got the word, they'll go into their teams and they'll go right, here's what we want to happen. Here's how I want it doing.
00:14:26
Speaker
You're now empowered to do it. Off you go. And this reflects a story I had with the CEO. I was chatting to him before I went in to do the deep dive and then some training. And we got talking about all these buzzwords. And I said, so I'll call him Bob. Bob, tell me about psychological safety. Oh, yes, we have psychological safety across our organization and and certainly within our teams. was excellent, Bob, wonderful.
00:14:52
Speaker
How do you know that? because I've told them. And I was, okay, because Bob said it must therefore be happening. So obviously I went and talked to the teams and there was no psychological safety. And when I told them what the CEO had said, they just laughed and that's all very well. But if that's not being cascaded down through the the hierarchical layers below,
00:15:11
Speaker
Then when that team challenged their manager, believing to have psychological safety, it backfired on them because it didn't get taken the right way. So you have to go in and not just say you are this.
00:15:26
Speaker
So going back to general pattern, tell people your intent, tell people what you want them to do, but let them come up with a how.
Common Mistakes in Empowerment
00:15:35
Speaker
If you just say, here's how I want you to do it and I'm empowering you to do it the way I've told you, then again, that's going to get that backlash from the team because A, you're taking away their own agency to do that.
00:15:46
Speaker
And your how is probably not the right way and you're not really empowering them. you're just mandating them what you need them to do. So that's what we're seeing as a first. Yeah. yeah it Yeah.
00:15:56
Speaker
So they've used the E word and they've got bright people who they're completely capable. And I think, even Bob probably feels frustrated that it's not working.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah, he really did. When I went back and briefed him, and and and he was pretty new and all, he'd been there about six months, and I explained what was going on. And he said, that's not me, though. That's not, I don't want that. I want people to challenge. He was that progressive, open-minded leader.
00:16:24
Speaker
yeah. said, Bob, but what you don't understand is your predecessor, His behaviors are what's now tainted your directors and execs below you. What you have now is a team who are like, they're the monkeys in the cage who, you know, they go for the banana and they get a host pipe or they get, they've been beaten that often every time they've spoken up before that they now dared and speak up.
00:16:47
Speaker
Even if you're a good guy, you're really, we don't trust you. So it's going to take a lot of time to unpick those
Leadership Styles & Empowerment
00:16:53
Speaker
behaviors. psychological problems that they've got. So it's really, I go back to the holistic understanding that you need to have as a leader.
00:16:59
Speaker
And I've had this issue. I'm a very optimistic, open, friendly guy, and I'll barrel into places in the past. Hey, right, here's what we're going to People just sit there and look at you going, okay, where's this guy come? This isn't real. This is a trap.
00:17:12
Speaker
People are not like this. So they're very s skeptical. And rightly so, because again, it it does get you burnt if you ah you trip over it. And there are layers, aren't there? Because Bob might have people, stakeholders that don't share that same view. So it's ah it's a complicated old situation, isn't it? That you may well have a great intent, but actually you're stymied by...
00:17:35
Speaker
the mothership or however you want to describe it. Or you've got your own dissenters at the higher level. The dissenters aren't just at the workforce. You know, I've worked in in boards where I've had two members of the C-suite who were surface dissenters when we did the investigation and they were literally going around Machiavellian style yeah causing major problem because they disagreed with the CEO.
00:17:55
Speaker
They basically thought if we can time him out, he'll go and one of us will get the slot. You know, so it's it's quite disturbing when you do see what's going on, but that manifests pretty quickly when you see what's the bigger picture in the organization.
Steps to Effective Empowerment
00:18:08
Speaker
I feel like we're really clear about the do-nots, what it might look like, how we can test it. So now my listener is thinking, okay, come on, what should I do instead?
00:18:21
Speaker
Indeed. So we talked about the E-word. I've got four E-words that we're going to use here. So If you to our website, front and center, one of my main mantras is unleash your people.
00:18:32
Speaker
So this is what you're trying to do. And there's a little picture of a superhero kid in a Batman suit. Because one of my beliefs is that inside every one of us, there's a dormant superhero. and it is desperate to come out.
00:18:44
Speaker
Nobody gets out of bed in the morning, comes to work to do a bad job. They want to come and do great stuff. They want to go home and tell their wife, their family, their partners, their kids, their moms, hey, guess what I did at work today, mom? People are proud of doing good stuff. And that's my belief. And hopefully it stands the test of time.
00:18:59
Speaker
So you need to unleash that capability in that individual. So the first E for me is engage. You have to engage your people at the level they're at, at the understanding they have, and often you're over here and they're over there. So you have to bring that together and understand why you're in polarized positions and engage them at the level they're at, wherever that may be. So they're clear on your intent.
00:19:28
Speaker
They're clear on what's gone before and why that was bad or good and what's coming and why. So they really understand. And if you involve them in that and use all the different tools and techniques to get their input, it's not, again, it's not a one-way diatribe. It's engaging collectively, collaboratively, so everybody's having their say.
00:19:46
Speaker
And you alone as a team leader or manager, you'll get to see a surfacing of many of the things that you probably weren't aware of either. So it's really good for everyone. It's almost a... a safe venting session. So people have got psychological safety. They can get everything out and then you've leveled the playing field.
00:20:03
Speaker
Everything's out on the table. There's none of this, oh, but this comes out next week or downrange. No, we clear it now. or we can't move forward. So engage. lot of listening in that
Active Listening in Engagement
00:20:14
Speaker
stage. Active listening is key. And that's one of the things when we do this with execs, I'll brief them that when we go in there, lot of things are going to happen and come out that you might not like and make might make you feel very awkward and comfortable.
00:20:26
Speaker
And depending on the character, your initial reaction might be to attack or to go super defensive. If you do that, that just kills everything. The people will witness that behavior and they'll see that you're just jumping through a hoop to say this rather than physically mean it.
00:20:39
Speaker
So doing that well, and this goes down to the quality of facilitation, setting up the environment, the room, the people, preamble with all of that is really important. So get them engaged.
00:20:50
Speaker
And when you see this happen, I call it the Terminator red eye. All of those disenfranchised, disengaged people, their eyes light back up again. They're like, ah This is great. This is what I want to do. This is why I came to work today.
00:21:04
Speaker
We're going to be doing this. Great. I'm all in. I've never met anybody who's like, no, not doing this. They want this. So you're on an open door almost that you're pushing against. <unk> I've started that process with people that have had literally crossed arms.
00:21:18
Speaker
What's all this rubbish? That's always a tell. You walk there'll be a character like that. It's like bloody happening on my watch. And then by the end, sometimes they're the biggest advocates of this because they're going, this is different. No, this is different. And that's so refreshing. And then they are there.
00:21:36
Speaker
They've got their arms crossed because sadly they've been battered and abused by years of this behavior. So you come in with this something fresh and they're all s skeptical, rightly so. Someone told me that the other week, what you guys do is too good to be true.
00:21:48
Speaker
I said, it feels that way, doesn't it? But come and try it. Within an hour, you'll be convinced of the wise. Because it is. And it's revelationary how you do this. So engage your people. And you'll know you'll see the pennies start to drop and the light bulbs come on.
00:22:01
Speaker
Next thing, and this is where another trap is to go straight to empowerment.
Preparing Teams for Empowerment
00:22:04
Speaker
No, you have to enable them. And Stanmer Crystal talks about empowered execution. And if you just drop from the top your intent, your mission, actions, and drop that to the front line and say, right, you're empowered, you get chaos.
00:22:19
Speaker
Because those people won't be strong enough to say, no, we're not. We don't know what to do. They'll just get on with it and do it. And they won't be enabled. They'll be floundering and they'll try and do stuff that they don't have the capacity, the skills, the capability, the tools, the techniques, understanding, and they'll create chaos.
00:22:37
Speaker
And the boss will go, ah, but I am empowered you all. You idiots. You got it all wrong. You're the bad ones, not me. And we've got, again, examples the law of that. So that next E is enable.
00:22:48
Speaker
So training, upskilling, tools, techniques, clarity, have they got understanding of what's to be done? Who are they doing it with? There are dependencies. Is it external, internal, cross team?
00:23:02
Speaker
Who in the team has got the right skills? Who do we need to bring in to upskill the gaps? So you do that. Then you empower once you're comfortable that they are capable of taking the reins, right?
00:23:15
Speaker
It's like riding a bike or riding a horse. You sat behind someone, you've got the reins tight. The person in front, you can feel them holding them. But at some point you're easing off. Same with the bike and the stabilizers of the kid. You know, by the time my dad let go of my stabilizers on the bike, I look back, he was gone.
00:23:31
Speaker
I look down, my stabilizers were gone. right And that was just progressive enablement over time that you don't even realize is happening. And then you're flying and you so you're cycling and you're off and riding clear.
00:23:42
Speaker
Sometimes I hear people say, yeah, but I employed them to do that job. So like I should be able to just empower them to do their job because they're good. Absolutely.
00:23:53
Speaker
How many jobs can you and I walk into where we sit down and do one thing on our own with zero interaction or dependencies on anyone else in an organization?
Integrating New Team Members
00:24:04
Speaker
You know, this is a very Tayloristic belief.
00:24:08
Speaker
you know If they've employed me and you to go onto the factory line to do, I'll put the bolts on the nuts that you've made and you've passed along to me. Great. I don't need empowerment. I just need to be told what to do because that's what I'm skilled at.
00:24:19
Speaker
But in the in the work today of information warfare almost and knowledge work, One person can't just come in. And even if they do come in as their expert, they have to understand how they are a piece of the jigsaw.
00:24:32
Speaker
What's the puzzle they're plugging into? that' That's the difficult part. And when you've got multiple players coming in, it's like a brilliant footballer. When they get brought into a team, they will have to adapt and evolve their style, their playing, their behaviors.
00:24:47
Speaker
to fit into the team. And we all know that if you've got a high performing team and we're working on Tuesday with a team of eight people who are scaling to 16 and they were like, Oh, soon as you do that we're going to be great now.
00:24:57
Speaker
I'm like, no, no, no. Every time you bring a new team member in, your performance will dip. How far that dips will be dependent on your processes to enable them to be engaged and able and empowered.
00:25:10
Speaker
So we've got to move away from, I employed you because you're great. Your CV told me this, get on with it. That's fine, but did you allow that interface into the environment, the team, the culture that
Essential Elements for Empowerment
00:25:22
Speaker
allows that? And one of the things we teach is the five Cs.
00:25:26
Speaker
So first C is clarity. Second C is capability. Third C is capacity. And the fourth C is culture. And then with all of those things in place, you get confidence.
00:25:40
Speaker
So when I bring you in and you've got all the skills I need, I need to make sure you have clarity. Do you understand the business, the vision, the mission, top level? Do you have clarity on then what I brought you in to do?
00:25:52
Speaker
Where you're doing it, who you're doing it with. Do you have clarity on your teammates around you and the problems they're facing and your line manager's concerns? That would be all useful. Then do you have the capability?
00:26:03
Speaker
So yes, you've got the skills, but if I stuck you in, and I saw this a lot in the banking industry, you bring brilliant tech people and then you give them garbage hardware. You know, I need a MacBook and they've got some HP thing that doesn't work and and the servers keep crashing and the internet.
00:26:19
Speaker
So that's not just capability of an individual, it's capability of the whole thing where you're providing all the different tools, techniques and platforms. And then if that person's then overburdened with fighting fires all the time, they're not going to have the third C, which is the capacity to do it. And we get that all the time.
00:26:37
Speaker
What's priorities? Oh, Marcus, here's my 10 priorities. Okay, are they in order, one through 10? No, no, there's 10 priorities. Therefore, you have none. So your people are fighting 10 things all the time.
00:26:48
Speaker
They don't have the capacity. And that culture then that follows from that is either good or bad, depending on how those first three C's happen. If you've got a great culture because you've nailed the three C's, your final C is confidence.
00:27:00
Speaker
And when your team have confidence, that's when you can empower them. because they're confident and capable to do what's needed. But if you don't, and the culture is going down, then they won't have confidence. And when you do empower them, that's when you create the chaos.
00:27:14
Speaker
And it's very easy when we go in and map this, you'll see at what point along that five C's journey, where it drops off, depending on the nature of the individuals and the actual company itself. Great.
00:27:25
Speaker
let's go back to our E's. Just interrupted you from the E's. Final E is
Metrics for Empowered Teams
00:27:31
Speaker
execute. So we've engaged our people. They understand everything and we've got everything from them. So we're all clear together and moving forward.
00:27:39
Speaker
We've then enabled them through understanding of what they need, not just in personal and professional skills, but technology, competency, et cetera. Now we can empower them to do what they need to do And that empowerment leads to execution, which is ultimately what business is about. They are now frontline productivity, doing what's required operationally.
00:28:02
Speaker
You then have to make sure that is happening in the way you want it to be happening. So we have to have the metrics in place. We have to have support mechanisms in place. We need to stop using red, amber, greens because those people will be telling you it's all green for six months. Then at the final report, it'll all go red again. So you get that watermelon reporting. Green on the outside, red on the inside. So helping executives, helping teams come up with metrics that are both leading and lagging indicators.
00:28:29
Speaker
So it allows you to preempt things that are going to go off rail, or it allows you to see things that you can put in place to accelerate and mitigate potential deviations downrange. And again,
00:28:41
Speaker
We've got a whole set of different metrics that are predominantly focused when you look at them on soft skills versus the hard skills. So it's measure what matters, not what's easy. Because the easy stuff is the numbers.
00:28:55
Speaker
How many widgets did you produce? um We had this with an exec in banking and he stood up and he said, right, last month our team delivered 24 widgets. This month we delivered 48. Chest puffed out, wonderful.
00:29:09
Speaker
And I just put my hand up. I went, so what? What do you mean, so what? We've doubled production. I said, how many of those 48 came back from frontline operations? And he didn't know.
00:29:21
Speaker
And I knew over half of them had been sent back through poor quality. So they'd set the wrong metrics. So the teams were being measured on how many things they threw into the frontline for customer use.
00:29:32
Speaker
yeah well If you'll be measured on that, if you throw 50 things over the wall, great. If you throw 100, you get a bonus. Well, let's throw 100. When those 50 come back again with faults and bugs and concerns from the customer, that's an operational problem that they've got to deal with.
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah, you've already got your little tick in the box.
Empowerment & Accountability
00:29:51
Speaker
So these metrics that often become vanity metrics, how fast are we delivering? How many are making? And you go back to the concept of Toyota, quality has to be baked in from the start.
00:30:02
Speaker
And if you're going to throw something over that wall into frontline operations and the customer, is somebody going to go that's good enough? Or are the team collectively in that mindset where they go,
00:30:15
Speaker
It'll do throw it over. It might come back. It might not. And that mindset will come from the culture you've created. And if you haven't got the right culture, if people are malaise, if they are disengaged, they'll just throw anything over the wall because they don't care. They're like, well, if I throw it over, it's good.
00:30:31
Speaker
So what if I throw it over, it's bad. So what? So these are all the things that you can very quickly understand and measure if you get the right metrics in place. And again, engage and enable your people to take the accountability because with empowerment comes accountability.
00:30:48
Speaker
And this is why the pushback, even when you've got all this in place, you often get pushback from the arm folders. They're like, well, I'm not taking responsibility for that. what You want me to be accountable? Yes, I do.
00:30:58
Speaker
That's what I'm paying you for. So you've got to get over that hurdle of that mindset shift of, again, with great power comes great responsibility. Uncle Ben from Spider-Man. So these people have to understand that, yes, that thing you've been crying out for, you're going to get it.
00:31:15
Speaker
But now you've got it, step up. You're now on point. Yes, the buck stops with the SEO, but you're on point and accountable for the thing that you're supposed to be dealing with, delivering, supporting. And that's the whole continuous sort of cyclical behavior that you have to keep monitoring. If you don't have monitoring in place to see how that's going and get the feedback mechanisms from your people, then that's where the cracks, when you think it's all going well, suddenly collapse three to six months down range.
00:31:44
Speaker
So you've got one scenario there that you haven't got the metrics right. And so things collapse, even though you might've done a really good job of all the other steps in the process.
00:31:56
Speaker
yeah Do you see people, leaders revert back? Yes.
Flexible Leadership
00:32:00
Speaker
Given this VUCA world we live in, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, crazy stuff is happening every day.
00:32:07
Speaker
So people plan for this scripted, almost waterfall project management type delivery. That's great. And they train their people to do and deliver that. But we have to bake in this capability of agile.
00:32:22
Speaker
and Agile should really be adaptive. Are you adaptive, flexible, and resilient to be able to continue on your journey of delivery, whatever it is you're doing, but be able to pivot and make decisions on the fly to stop you going off a cliff or stop you hitting that wall?
00:32:40
Speaker
So that's part of the enablement of your people. So they can do that. So what's going to happen is they're going to have a trajectory, and as they go forward, they're going to hit a problem. If they're not enabled, if they're not taking accountability, they will go into stasis. They'll stop and go, right, we need to wait for the boss to make a decision.
00:32:56
Speaker
Well, that decision meeting is in a week on Thursday, so nothing's to happen until then. And they just go into paralysis and everything stops and then more things back up. Or they've got that empowered execution capability. They've got the confidence to do that and they'll make a decision.
00:33:11
Speaker
And then what you tend to see, and it's a great ah great metric for yourself, look at the roadmap line, the line of delivery. Are you going along that line and then meandering, give or take five or 10 degrees?
00:33:24
Speaker
Nobody goes straight ever. in the In the history of any delivery ever, nobody's gone from A to B straight. But are you meandering? Or are you going off 90 left and then swinging 90 right and 60? And yeah are you constantly, and then when you stretch it out, the line's 10 times longer than it was so versus two times longer.
00:33:43
Speaker
So that's a really good indicator. And when that's happening, what happens then is the executives get back on the
Adaptive Leadership vs. Command & Control
00:33:51
Speaker
reins. So they start to yank the reins back.
00:33:54
Speaker
And I've written down here, A, there's a trust issue. They don't trust their people to make those decisions. That's fueled by fear. Going back to what you said, there there are other stakeholders around them who are putting the pressure on them.
00:34:07
Speaker
So, Corinne, you trusted Marcus to do this, and then that didn't work? oh, right. Therefore, I don't trust Marcus. I'm going to do it and I'm going to pull the reins back. But you know what?
00:34:20
Speaker
You're not capable of doing it either. Most of these executives at high level today haven't upskilled themselves along the journey, which is why you bring in the great people at the front line to do this for you.
00:34:30
Speaker
So what I say here, the old school mentality kicks back in, the command and control, retain the power, pull the reins back, And therefore, you create an inability to delegate or to pull back the form delegation, which creates huge frustration. I've seen that with teams where they were flowing.
00:34:48
Speaker
Everything was going great. And then an incident, not even an incident internally happens, but a an event happened, right? The banks did something. The market said something. The budget caused this to happen.
00:34:59
Speaker
Whatever it might be, another competitor did something. Are we capable of dealing with that while doing our job? If every time something happens like that, I fall off my bike, I'm not going to be very good at riding my bike throughout my life.
Challenges in Maintaining Empowerment
00:35:11
Speaker
But if I'm able to hop onto the curb, if I'm able to swerve out the way and carry on and deal with that, that's a great position to be in. But they don't do that. So something happens, everything grinds to a halt, the reins get tightened,
00:35:24
Speaker
And then those enabled and empowered people become even more frustrated at that point because it's like, we've proven this. We've we've gone through all this stuff you wanted to do, we're doing it. And now yeah you can feel a dog leash pulling back on you and choking you.
00:35:39
Speaker
And then you start to see, going back to what we said earlier, all the things that lead from that, people leaving, people downing tools and executives also get frustrated. And then they'll bring in an initiative.
00:35:50
Speaker
And people are really, really arms crossed to the point of, nah, we've been here before. Absolutely. And then you get that vicious circle of deja vu and those those people who cross their arms are crossing it for a reason because they've seen it.
00:36:03
Speaker
And those who want to stick around tend to outlive the executives who are short in in tenure, coming in and going. Yeah. You people at the front line say, look, it's the old longevity bias, isn't it? We've always done it this way. And here we are again. So you try and and you get the progressive leaders come in and sometimes the progressives come in and I've seen this.
00:36:24
Speaker
where they want to make the change. And we see this in politics, but then the rest of them swarm around them. And before you know it, they're out. Yeah. Because that change, that's going to cause a lot of problems for the rest of us. You need to be quiet and stop doing that.
00:36:37
Speaker
And your team's embarrassing my team at the product update. So you see those executive executives very quickly have the Machiavellian behaviors going on around them as well. So what we're talking about team level This also has to happen at every team.
Leadership at All Levels
00:36:53
Speaker
The board is a team. yeah There's less team-like behavior the further up you get. So when we talk about adaptive leadership and team dynamics, those things have to occur at all levels. So we teach interns about leadership because they have a leadership capability, and it's in the context of where they're at.
00:37:09
Speaker
And I teach chairmen the board about leadership because they have to understand how leadership has evolved from when they were doing it. And likewise with teams, when you start to look at a team of executives, a C-suite,
00:37:20
Speaker
you normally have eight individual players who've got their own agendas, their own armor that they're wearing, their own ways of trying to manipulate the organization. And the poor CEO is believing he's got a team, really he's not.
00:37:33
Speaker
So he's trying to manage them. Majority have imposter syndrome. You know, they believe they shouldn't be there and they're struggling and they're winging it day by day. So if you help them become a team and help each other appreciate the value they can bring as a collective,
00:37:48
Speaker
then that then starts to permeate and roll down through the organization. We could end up feeling a little depressed. We could. So let's try and move towards hope.
00:38:01
Speaker
I feel like a politician now. We've dug into this subject and looked at when it doesn't work, when it reverts back, but what are you seeing about the possibilities and the opportunities that are more present now than they've ever been.
People Focus & AI Integration for Success
00:38:20
Speaker
We're seeing a lot, thankfully, and I think that's because the nature of the people who come to us are these progressives who are astute enough to understand. So the last 20 years, we've seen the bandwagon effect where we've jumped on tech, we've jumped on digital, we've jumped on agile.
00:38:34
Speaker
Now we're jumping on AI ai is great. Let's not be ah dismissive of AI and the capabilities of it. But for AI to work, you need CI, which is collective intelligence.
00:38:47
Speaker
which is the group of your people coming together to enable AI to do the great things it can do in the way it should be doing them. If you look at the World Economic Forum, their future jobs report, since 2020 out to 2027, the top two skills you require are analytical thinking and creative thinking.
00:39:07
Speaker
Collectively, we call those critical thinking. AI and big data sit at number three. But 96% of the boardroom focus is on AI. They're not focused on thinking. Why? Because everybody thinks they critically think and they don't.
00:39:21
Speaker
So what we're seeing though is a reality check in that people are not understanding AI. It's running away with them or they're just not using it. If you're not using AI today, you're already behind the drag curve.
00:39:32
Speaker
So you're either not using it through fear of not knowing how, or you're using it, but you're putting all your eggs in one basket for the AI. So the organizations we're working with, those who we're talking to are realizing that they've got to put people back at the heart of their organization, engage them, enable them, empower them.
00:39:51
Speaker
They'll then execute. Going back to what we say, you've then unleashed your people to do the right thing. Back in the day when we used to do project management, 101, it used to be the three Ps, people, platform, process.
00:40:06
Speaker
With the technical evolution, it's now all platform focused, digital, processes, there's more processes out there that these wonderful consultants are bringing in and selling like snake oil. And people kind of just near fallen off. So the trio with the lead singer of people has now become a duet and the lead singer has been fired.
Reintegrating People into Focus
00:40:25
Speaker
So seeing the requirement to get people back into the heart of what we do, going back to my focus on people, your ROI is going to go up. Anything you're doing, bring the people back in, engage them in the right way, get their input, and then you will start to see everything else start to come back to how it used to be with people engaging, people interacting in the right way, your culture will flourish, and your ah ROI will go up, and you can keep your stakeholders and your board members happy and shareholders.
00:40:54
Speaker
Engage your people, unleash your people. And everyone knows this, but the physical how you do that Jose, the chap I wrote the book with for big things fast says it's simple, not easy. And that's the problem. They think it's simple. So they try and do it, yeah but they don't realize it's not easy.
00:41:12
Speaker
So you've got to get the things right. You've got to get the right skills and right enabled people to support what you're trying to do. And once you do it, then literally you're off to the races and it doesn't take a lot of time. I say these are the sort of things you can unlock within a day to two days very quickly.
00:41:28
Speaker
And those people, those arm folders are going to be quickly unfolding their arms and then they become your advocates. yeah And that's what you want. You want people then out preaching the good word, preaching that, hey, this exec team we've got, they they've turned the corner.
00:41:41
Speaker
Why? Let me show you what we did today. And then they're sharing as well. It's not a reliance on yeah one exec. ah yeah yeah You get a cascade pyramid effect, which is what you need in ah in a pyramid. That before you know it, the whole organization is singing off the same song sheet. They're all evangelizing about this new thing we're all doing, but it's genuine. It's not just another bandwagon effect that we're all jumping on. They're doing it because they're seeing the yeah outcomes for that.
00:42:07
Speaker
And I think that's what we'll hopefully see an increase in as we go forward, putting people back at the heart, at the engine of all organizations. That's my hope. I'm going miss as well as I said. Yeah, same here. I believe it can happen.
00:42:20
Speaker
That's why I want to finish with a ah the hopeful message. Well, I feel like through that conversation, we've revealed more of the how and it's doable stuff. So thank you very much, Marcus. You have been great guest.
00:42:39
Speaker
I'll see what it what you are in the competition of greatest guest. I'll let you know. oh No question. ah It was really good talking to you. Thanks very much. And you, Corinne. Thank you.
00:42:50
Speaker
Pleasure.
00:42:55
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Visible Leader podcast. To stay up to date with the latest episode, hit the subscribe button. And I'd love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review.
00:43:06
Speaker
If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me. Corinne Hines on LinkedIn.