Autonomy Through Boundaries

/ Ken Blanchard

When I talk to leaders about helping their people become autonomous, a lot of them think I mean they should give people the freedom to do anything they want. That is not the case. To inspire an empowered, autonomous workforce, leaders must create boundaries.

Boundaries have the capacity to channel energy in a specific direction. Just as the banks of a river channel the power and energy of water, so do effective boundaries channel the power and energy of people.

One of my favorite sayings is “A river without banks is a very large puddle,” taken from my book with John Carlos and Alan Randolph, Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute. Without boundaries, the work people do has no momentum and direction.

            Establishing boundaries sets people up to win. Imagine playing tennis with just a net and no markings for boundary lines. You wouldn’t know how to keep score, evaluate your performance, or improve your game.

            Here are the steps to take to create empowering boundaries:

  1. Establish clear goals, expectations, and standards of performance.

Goals ensure people know the areas in which you expect them to be autonomous and responsible. The worst thing a manager can do is to send people off on their own with no clear goals and then punish them when they don’t meet unspoken expectations. Don’t be one of those managers. Communicate in plain language what people need to accomplish.

  • Ensure people are aware of all procedures, rules, and laws.

Policies and procedures are important to guide day-to-day operations and decision making. Just be sure to review the rules periodically to make sure they are still relevant. If your people alert you to a procedure that no longer makes sense, listen to them. They’re often closer to the action than you are and better able to see when it’s time to rethink outdated procedures.

  • Confirm everyone knows your organization’s compelling vision:
    • Your purpose (what business you are in)
    • Your picture of the future (where you are going)
    • Your values (what will guide your journey)

By communicating your organization’s vision, you help people understand how their work fits into the big picture. Seeing their contribution to the mission and vision of the organization can motivate people to high performance.

            While it may sound counter-intuitive, boundaries and the fastest way to empower people to become autonomous. Clear boundaries allow people to make decisions, take initiative, act like owners, and stay on track to reach both personal and organizational goals.

This blog was based on Simple Truth #12 in Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, available now at your favorite bookstore. To download an eBook summary of the book, please go here.

An Empowered Workforce Focuses on the Greater Good

/ Ken Blanchard

In an earlier blog post on the topic of quiet quitting, I made a case for servant leadership—leaders who serve their people by helping them realize that quiet quitting (disengagement at work) is not the answer. Servant leaders establish a safe, caring environment, let people know how valuable they are as individuals, ask them what they need, listen to their answers, and work side by side with them on a solution.

I want to go one step further today with another goal for organizations run by servant leaders: creating a culture of empowerment.

Empowerment is an organizational climate that unleashes the knowledge, experience, and motivation that reside in people. Creating a culture of empowerment doesn’t happen overnight—but leaders of the best run companies know that empowerment creates satisfied people, positive relationships, and never before seen results. People are excited about the organizational vision, motivated to serve customers at a higher level, and focused on working toward the greater good.

It’s true—empowered employees have more expected of them. But along with those high expectations comes growth, career development, the satisfaction of belonging to a self-directed team and being involved in decisions, and a sense of ownership.

In Empowerment Takes More than a Minute, the book I coauthored with John Carlos and Alan Randolph, we offer three keys leaders must use to guide the transition to a culture of empowerment.

The First Key: Share Information with Everyone

Team members who get the information they need from their leader can make good business decisions. But when leaders keep important information to themselves, people often come up with their own version of the truth—which may be worse than reality. And when people don’t have accurate information, they can’t act responsibly.

Servant leaders trust their people and realize that openly sharing information about themselves and the organization—good or bad—is the right thing to do. It builds trust between managers and their people. And when people have accurate information, they can make decisions that are in the best interests of the organization.

The Second Key: Create Autonomy through Boundaries

Counter to what some people believe, there is structure in an empowered organization. It is there to inform team members of the boundaries that exist within their autonomy. These boundaries take the form of vision statements, goals, decision-making rules, performance management partnerships, etc. Within those ranges, team members can determine what to do and how to do it. As the empowered person grows, the range of structures also grows to allow them a greater degree of control and responsibility.

The Third Key: Replace the Hierarchy with Self-Directed Individuals and Teams

Empowered, self-directed individuals and teams—highly skilled, interactive groups with strong self-managing skills—are more effective in complex situations. They don’t just recommend ideas—they make and implement decisions and are held accountable for results. Today, success depends on empowered, self-directed individuals and teams.

Empowerment means that people have the freedom to act. It also means that they are accountable for results. The journey to empowerment requires everyone to challenge their most basic assumptions about how business should operate. People at all levels of the organization must master new skills and learn to trust self-directed individuals and teams as decision-making entities. An empowered culture is not easily built—but the rewards for the organization, its leaders, and its workers are enduring and plentiful.

Playing Well with Others

/ Ken Blanchard

Remember the days when we used to get report cards from our teachers? They gave us feedback not only about our class work but also about us as human beings. Perhaps you were one of the kids whose teacher praised you by saying that you “played well with others.” If so, good on you! Playing well with others is an essential life skill, no matter how old we get.

 Who Are Your Truth Tellers and Challengers?

It’s not always easy to work well with others, especially when the other person is very different from us. Often, the people we work with don’t share our opinions or our approach to problem solving. They might even challenge our thinking and insist on doing things their way—or at least insist that we compromise. This is a good thing! Why? Because we need truth tellers and challengers to help us grow and develop.

In her wonderful book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin shows how Lincoln became the greatest American president, in part by surrounding himself with those who had initially opposed him and who continued to challenge him throughout his presidency.

How Working with People Least Like Me Brought Out the Best in Me

Early in my career, I worked with a man who wasn’t like me in many ways. Where I was easygoing, he was a stickler. Where I saw the big picture, he was better at details. Where I had a live-and-let-live philosophy, he had a take-no-prisoners approach. A lot of people found it tough to be around this man, but he was brilliant and working with him led to a wonderful career for me.

I don’t regret a single day I spent working with this man. He got me excited about leadership and pushed me hard to be clear and theoretically sound in my work. I would not have become as good a teacher or presenter if not for him.

I also had a writing partner whose personality could be tough at times. He insisted on getting his way and didn’t always use tact when he communicated his opinions. Yet he had such a brilliant, creative mind that I knew I had to write a book with him. Despite the many confrontations we had, the book we worked on together never would have reached its full potential without him.

Working with these two men showed me how partnering with people who were different than I was could improve my skills and ignite my career.

The Benefits of Working with Others

I believe that playing well with others is my superpower. Over the past 53 years I’ve written more than 65 books, most of them with coauthors. Here are just a few of the upsides to working with others.

Learning. My mother used to ask me why I didn’t write my own books. “I already know what I know,” I would tell her. “When I write with somebody else, I learn a lot.” Writing with others increases my knowledge on multiple topics.

Skill Building. By working with coauthors, I sharpen my writing skills—vocabulary, grammar, organization, and structure. I also get to practice patience and listening skills.

Productivity. Without question, working with others increases my productivity. It is highly doubtful that I could have published more than 65 books on my own.

Networking. On my seventieth birthday, we threw a party and invited all my coauthors to attend. What a joy it was to be with all the wonderful writing partners I’d had over the years! There were around 30 of them at that time, and the number is even larger today. Developing a network of special friends is one of the greatest benefits of working with others.

Ability to Serve Others. I believe that the purpose of work is to make a positive contribution to humanity. Working with others allows me to expand my influence and make a bigger difference in people’s lives.

So, don’t go it alone! Learn to play well with others—especially those who might be different than you. Collaborating with others will bring out the best in you—and it will benefit your organization, as well.

Quiet Quitting and the Servant Leader

/ Ken Blanchard

Let’s face it—over the past couple of years, life at home and at work has become more difficult for just about everyone. I’ve always been a great advocate of positive thinking, and I still am. But I know it’s not always easy to keep your head up when going through tough times.

We’ve been reading a lot about a trend called “quiet quitting.” It’s when people feel so overworked, overwhelmed, and stressed that they make a conscious decision to do the bare minimum on the job. They stop doing things like working on tasks outside of their job description or volunteering for work teams or committees. They come to work every day, do their job as assigned, and go home. They are hurting—and they hope quiet quitting is a way for them to avoid burnout and still keep their job.

As a servant leader, you are there to serve your people, develop them, and bring out the best in them. It’s important for you to say and do the right things—but if people don’t believe you truly care about them, you won’t earn their trust. When you become aware that someone is troubled, schedule a one-on-one meeting and show them you care by asking them what they need, listening to the answers, and working together on a solution. If your company has an Employee Assistance Program, have your HR department send out reminders letting people know how they can take advantage of that benefit. 

Leadership is a matter of the heart. Pay attention to your team members. If you notice anyone exhibiting uncharacteristically negative behavior or seeming unusually tired or withdrawn, let them know you have their best interests at heart by reaching out to help. As a trusted servant leader, when you establish a sincere, caring environment through your words and actions, you can be assured your people will remember the way you made them feel.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou) is Simple Truth #36 in Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, my new book with Randy Conley. It’s on sale now at your favorite bookstore or online retailer. Download an eBook summary for a preview here!

Leaders: Stop Treating Everybody the Same

/ Ken Blanchard

Every great leader strives to treat their people fairly and equitably. But leaders who think that means they need to treat all their people the same are doing their people a disservice. One of the most unfair things a leader can do is give everybody the same broad-brush treatment.

If you’re thinking, “I have to use the same leadership style with everyone or it will look like I am playing favorites,” remember that each person is skilled in different areas and at different levels. Brad may be an ace at creating graphs and managing data on spreadsheets and Ginger may be highly skilled in designing online presentations. Although you would be able to delegate a spreadsheet task to Brad, Ginger would need to start with specific direction on how to create a spreadsheet. And Brad would need to begin at square one with presentation software while Ginger would be able to sail through a design project on her own.

Let’s look at this topic situationally using our SLII® leadership training model.

Every person is at a specific development level (amount of both competence and commitment) on each task or goal they are pursuing. For example, a professional editor (let’s call him JT) with 20 years of experience is what we call a self-reliant achiever—the highest development level (D4)—at editing. JT has internal clients who send him documents to edit but he needs almost no direction or support to do the job well.

Now let’s say JT decides he really wants to learn to play guitar. When he begins working toward this goal, he is initially at the lowest development level (D1—enthusiastic beginner) at playing guitar. He is excited about learning but has no idea what he is doing. He needs specific direction (S1) from his instructor on every aspect of playing, starting with how to hold the instrument and position his hands.

After a short time of learning and practicing, JT is discouraged. His fingertips are sore and he can’t get the rhythm of strumming. He thought playing guitar would be easy and fun, but it’s not. JT is now at the development stage we call disillusioned learner (D2). He needs direction as well as coaching (S2) from his instructor to help him power through this stage.

Fortunately, JT doesn’t give up. With continued instruction, he slowly gains confidence and becomes a capable, but cautious, contributor (D3). He is still learning, but he knows how to play guitar competently and enjoys practicing and challenging himself. He continues to get support (S3) and encouragement from his instructor but needs only occasional direction.

After months of continuous practice, a bit more instruction, and some performing in front of friends and family, JT has reached D4 as a guitar player. He is confident in his skill and proud of his accomplishment. He will still keep his day job as an editor, but has developed his original spark of interest into an enjoyable pastime. JT’s instructor knew how to set him up for success by using different leadership styles—specific amounts of direction and support—depending on JT’s level of expertise at the task at hand.

As you can see, even though someone is a seasoned expert (D4) at one task, they can be a beginner (D1) at another. The concepts of SLII® can be applied to relationships at work, at home, and in the community by leaders, parents, partners, teachers, coaches—anyone who wants to help others accomplish goals.

Most likely, each of your direct reports has areas where you can simply delegate to them—and they also have new tasks or goals where they need your specific direction. Let your people know you care about helping them develop their skills. Work with them to diagnose their development level on each of their tasks, and flex your leadership style to match by giving them the amount of direction and support they need to accomplish their goals. Your people, your organization, and your leadership will be all the better for it! “There’s nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals” is Simple Truth #40 in Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, my new book with Randy Conley. It’s on sale now at your favorite bookstore or online retailer. Download an eBook summary for a preview here!