“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Healthy leaders listen, collaborate and creates an ownership culture where team members and followers are bought in to the vision and mission. Healthy leaders are engaged and care about their teammates. Healthy leaders build trust by being consistent and predictable: they have a plan and they carry it forward. People want to pour into healthy leaders because they know they will be more than likely healthy followers.
Healthy leaders create healthy followers. And that's wonderful. But let's go a level higher: Empowering leaders create great(er) leaders.
Empowering leaders plan, listen, serve, engage, and care about their own health, but their focus is to give responsibility away to others to do more than they can do themselves.
Here's the difference: A healthy leader will tell their followers and team members what to do. An empowering leader will give their team members the ability and freedom to make decisions.
How deep into our organization have we empowered people to say, "Yes"? Do your team members on the front lines have the authority to make decisions and say yes?
Go from Healthy to Empowering:
1. Keep Growing: Start by empowering yourself. Keep learning. Keep yourself in check. You can only take people where you've been.
2. Grow Your Followers: Lead your followers to a point where you can entrust them with greater responsibility.
3. Grow Your Leaders: Trust your leaders to lead others and do things you can't do yourself.
4. Grow Your Team of Leaders to Lead Teams: Train your leaders to empower others and become an incubator of empowering leaders.