Empowering Minds Want to Know!

This week our Impacting Leaders team conducted a training for a group of leaders. These leaders not only lead others but they are also followers… well, aren’t we all? Our topic was on delegating and empowering. This group shared some great insights when we asked them to describe what empowerment is or to describe a time when they felt empowered.

They painted a picture that was so satisfying to me that I knew I would be sharing it in today’s blog. Here is their description:

• Confidence – When someone trusts you enough to empower you with a project it gives you confidence because they have confidence in you.
• A satisfying feeling – Being empowered bring satisfaction to your soul. You feel important.
• An opportunity to grow – Learning new tasks and taking on new levels of responsibility stretch your leader skill sets and competency learning.
• Develops trust and loyalty between leader and follower – When my leader trusts me enough to hand something off I want to return that trust back by being successful. Together this forms a strong sense of loyalty. It’s give and give back instead of give and take.
• Improves performance – Good empowerment also brings coaching and honest feedback. This allows for performance improvements as well as how to have an attitude that can
  receive correction.
• Reduces stress for the leader – When the follower can be empowered it’s a huge benefit for the leader. It allows the leader to do more and frees up space in their brain.
• Career development – When we delegate and empower we  move work off our desk, giving other teammates’ new work opportunities while freeing ourselves up to focus on what
  really matters.

I was touched by this last statement that I want to highlight. It’s what makes leadership stay alive from generation to generation. It’s also what motivates my team and me to do what we are called to do every day. I’ll leave you with this quote from a young leader named Joel:

“Because of how good being empowered can make you feel, you’ll remember this later in your career and you’ll know the importance of passing it on by empowering someone that you get to lead some day.”