JAMIE’S NOTE

As a curator, my purpose is to help people work and lead better through meaningful learning. I constantly search for research findings and best practices that make a real-world difference. That's why watching this video was genuinely rewarding. It features a leader who achieved exceptional performance and deeply empowered her employees by putting shared learnings into practice and truly internalising the insights. In this interview, you will hear about the transformative journey she and her team went through. It's a great reminder that changing our minds through new learning is a powerful force. I hope this story inspires and energises your own journey.

WHY READ THIS
How empowerment and agile ways of working can contribute to increased productivity levels.

IN BRIEF
Transformation at the organisational level starts with leaders transforming themselves. This case study shows that middle leaders, with the right mentality and tools, can adopt a more empowering leadership style. In this real-world story, it led to higher engagement, adaptability and eliminated burnout.

KEY FINDINGS

• Listening to team members. True empowerment as a leader starts with listening to what your team have to say. This is particularly true when it relates to workload and changing ways of work.

• Facilitating shared decisions. It’s natural to be concerned about losing control and have doubts around whether team members are ready for the responsibility. Having someone who can champion new workflows is an effective way to bring the whole team on the journey together. From there, making decisions on the tools and approach together generates buy-in.

• Ensuring your team is informed and can speak up. Team members need to understand what the organisation’s priorities are before making decisions on things like what tools to use. When leaders share information, team members can then come up with quality ideas to execute on key priorities.

• Teaching team members to think as leaders. Being siloed on project ownership is not conducive to agile ways of working. Shifting mentalities to thinking more as a leader helps create a transparent environment and improved decision-making.

• Achieving productivity gains. Working this way harnesses transparency and trust, as people feel heard and adopt a mindset of thinking of their own resource capacity. There needs to be a clear structure for collaboration, whether this is a 15-minute daily stand-up or an hour workshop together.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Effectively empowering your team can provide significant meaning to your leadership and free up time to spend on developing others as future leaders. Time is primarily spent mentoring or coaching. It’s vital to engage the team in establishing ways of working, but this can’t happen until leaders adopt a mentality that is entirely trusting of their team.