Diane Egbers and Carole Dorn-Bell discuss the role of empowerment in agile leadership
In this second part of the new series on Agile Leadership, Diane Egbers of Leadership Excelleration discusses the Empower role.
Host Carole Dorn-Bell asks how the role of Empower complements the role highlighted in the previous episode, Adventure.
Diane says Empower tends to be the super power of Gen X (commonly characterized as those born between 1965 and 1980).
“These are the folks that love to coach, are collaborative, more affiliative and really bring out the best in teams,” Diane says. “They’re really great at creating collaboration, empowering others by coaching them into how you operate effectively on collaborative teams and how, then, we value every person at the table.”
The ability to Empower is critical to getting the most from every team member.
Carole asks about the essential knowledge and abilities it takes to Empower teams to achieve transformational learning outcomes.
A vital skill set is making sure there is an emphasis on collaborative work. That begins with having a common vision and having coaching and alignment of skills. If a team member is unsure their contributions are valid, it’s critical to really coach them into a vital place where they’re making full contributions.
The Adventure and Empower roles play off each other.
Adventurers, often millennials, go off and do the research on best practices. The coaching comes in when they bring back that data to a team and say, okay, how is this relevant to us?
“Those that Empower tend to have enough content knowledge that they can help Adventurers sort through what’s important and what is non-essential,” Diane says.
To learn more, Diane recommends the Harvard Business Review piece called Agile at Scale, especially for larger school districts.
Read the full We Love Schools podcast episode about the role of empowerment in agile leadership.
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