Empowering Your Leadership Team: Strategies for Stepping Back to Step Up
As a leader with your team, to what extent are you inclined you “sit back” or “step in”?
Often when we are engaged with a new client, one of their objectives is to enable their Leadership Team members to grow in their “leadership capability”. The CEO is often fatigued from the burden of needing to lift the team over the line for many milestones. CEOs often run a meeting, push for ideas, come up with innovative concepts, hold people to account, and seem to be responsible for having all the answers, as well as making the final decisions. It is tiring, and often thankless. Worse still, it actually diminishes your people!
So how do you get your team to step-up?
Here are a few mechanisms to experiment with. These are all predicated on your ability, desire, and willingness to “create space” for your team to STEP INTO!
Have someone else chair and run your meetings;
Enable other people to take responsibility for making a number of decisions;
Elevate your trust in your team, by no longer attending meetings where those present “should” be able to manage things well;
Have someone else (not even your EA or Assistant if you have one) take down Action Items for the team. A good idea to rotate this opportunity 😊;
Stay totally curious. In fact, challenge yourself to ONLY ask questions through a meeting? That excludes wrapping up your ideas in a question! I have some cheeky clients that do this :-) ;
Create a debate for the team to make a decision on (excludes you too). There are a range of ways to do this. I deploy a few proven techniques for this;
When injecting your thought(s) and/or opinion(s) into a meeting, ensure that you’re the last one to speak; and
Encourage those quiet on a topic to develop a view and a voice. If they can’t contribute directly, they should be encouraged to also pressure-test comments and statements, and also get curious!
I’d also like to share a learning with you…
On occasions, I have seen my client CEOs really work hard to create space for their team. When I’m in the room facilitating, they will typically be asked to contribute last. There are occasions though, where the CEO (in the spirit of humility and creating space), can seem disengaged. This is even more pronounced if the CEO is typically highly communicative or even dominating in a meeting. One such CEO did a great job of creating space. He’s typically an exuberant, lively, communicative leader. Certainly not one to dominate a meeting. He did really sit back in this meeting, to the extent that I asked him if “everything was ok?”. He actually seemed unusually disengaged. He was simply trying extra hard to create space.
The learning here is, creating space doesn’t mean shutting your mouth. I think curiosity, encouragement, animation, are all key behaviours a leader trying to create space SHOULD do with their teams.
The CEO I am referring to and I discussed this situation, and set his sights on doing things a little differently. I’ve loved seeing the changes in him. He’s found his sweet-spot, and it’s a pleasure to watch his team lift and step in. The way he now behaves in the meetings is definitely contributing to his team using more of their intelligence, talents, and growing their leadership capability.
Given that many of you have leaders across your business, this briefing note is as applicable for them too. As a suggestion, please provide this to them, and ask them to reflect on what they’re doing to let their team members “step in and up”! You might also ask them to identify how they’re stepping in AND up in your team meeting.