Just like a rainbow you know you set me free, and I just can't get enough (Depeche Mode)

Photo by Sierra Koder on Unsplash

James Whatley recently posited some interesting thoughts about leadership on his newsletter about trust and empowerment. He also discusses accountability and being vulnerable. 

These are important concepts and worthy of investigation, as he does in his newsletter.

I'm going to be quoting from his thoughts a lot in this post. 

The salient points:

TRUST & EMPOWERMENT

This is something that is important to helping people feel - to put it frankly - like adults. The opposite of command & control. The opposite of micromanagement.

Trust & empowerment is the demonstration of the vision and key values that you as a leader have laid out for everyone to work within. Trusting others to not simply get a job done but also do so with care and consideration of themselves and those around them. To me this is part of the overall job around motivation. You're saying: 'I trust you. I think you can do this. And I trust you to figure this out'.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

HBR defines Psychological Safety as 'a shared belief held by members of a team that it’s OK to take risks, to express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences'.

There's no point entrusting and empowering people if they then don't feel safe to put forward opinion, test new concepts and maybe even get things wrong.

VULNERABILITY

In Brené Brown's now legendary TED talk 'the power of vulnerability', Brown states 'Our job is to look and say, “You know what? You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”'

ACCOUNTABILITY  

Again, these things are linked. Taking ownership is a big deal. Being a leader that is able to say: 'Yes, that was my fault. I could've done that better. I wasn't clear in how I communicated that. How can I improve? How I can support you better?' - that's accountability.

A just culture means that when things go wrong you say 'What went wrong and how can we improve?' over and above 'Who did this?' which, in turn creates a culture of blame.

Blame cultures are well known for creating toxic working environments; they erode employee mental health, instill an underlying inertia in employees' ability to make decisions (due to a fear of getting the slightest thing wrong) and end up stifling, or all out killing, productivity.