It’s one thing to be a leader in charge of people and responsible for people. It’s a different thing to be an empowering leader.
There are many leaders with titles and positions, but very few empowering leaders around the world today.
First, you should agree that only empowered people can reach their potential.
When a leader can’t or won’t empower people, he creates barriers within the organisation or a nation that people cannot overcome. If the barriers remain there long enough, the people give up or they move to another organisation or another country where they can maximise their potential.
If you want to be a successful leader, you have to move from just being seen as a leader with a title and position to becoming an empowerer.
I learnt many years ago that the only way to make yourself indispensable is to make yourself dispensable. In other words, if you are able to continually empower others and help them develop so that they become capable of taking over your job, you will become so valuable as a leader that you become indispensable.
To be an empowering leader is to make others do what you can do, and do it better, to transfer what you know to the next generation, to give, to make others become, to lift people, to add value to others.
Where can you start from?
- Believing in people and taking chances on them before they even show signs of success. If you believe in people when they become successful, you are late. To be an empowering leader, you have to be willing to take chances on people. You have to look for the potential in them and encourage them to believe in themselves.
Yes, that can be risky, because they may not come through. But if they do, the payoff can be huge. If they do come through, you would be responsible for inspiring a new leader to achieve things he never thought possible. And no one ever forgets the first person who believed in them.
Don’t wait to be in your old age to begin. Start today - Move from just believing. Believing happens in the mind. Put your mouth where your heart is. What I mean by this is that you should sing the praise of those you believe in their potential. Move from your heart to your mouth.
One of the best things you can do as an empowering leader is to sing your people’s praise to others. When they are doing a good job, tell everyone. Be especially intentional about praising them to their friends and families. But also bring them before other leaders. Help them make a connection on the strength of your credibility.
The price for this is intentionality. - Lastly, travel with them. To be an empowering leader, you must do more than believe in emerging leaders. You need to take steps to help them become the kind of leaders they have the potential to be. You must invest in them if you want to empower them to become their best.
Empowering people takes a personal investment. It requires time and energy. But it’s worth the price. If you do it right, you will have the privilege of seeing someone move up to a higher level. And as an added bonus, when you empower others you create power in your organisation.
Finally, you should know this – only secure leaders empower others. In Africa, we have too many leaders with titles and positions but still insecure that’s why they are not empowering a lot of emerging leaders.
Be different. Let our continent rise!
Empowered leaders are the key.
I’m rooting for you,
The Great Owete