CHAPTER 5

Enable Others to Act

CAROLYN BORNE IS PROGRAM DIRECTOR of the Women’s Health Initiative in a well-known medical school at a large state university. Part of a National Institutes of Health project, the Women’s Health Initiative is one of the largest and most ambitious longitudinal studies of postmenopausal women’s health concerns ever undertaken. The study requires careful planning, analytical ability, and meticulous attention to detail.

Because of its sensitive and significant nature, it also requires that the staff members have a high degree of collaboration and trust. But that climate didn’t exist when Carolyn arrived. The emphasis seemed to be on competition and suspicion rather than cooperation and support. Hard as the staff members were working, they were not at the expected national study goal for recruitment. Productivity and morale were low.

Carolyn took immediate steps to establish a different kind of climate, where people felt they knew one another and were respected and trusted by their colleagues. In the process of completing a needs assessment, she interviewed each staff member. She found that while people were enthusiastic about the study, they were frustrated by the lack of systems, organization, and especially teamwork; in fact, she said, “Each member of the team was a talented professional, but each was ready to quit. They all liked their jobs but did not feel supported.”

Carolyn set a goal to increase group cohesion through improving communication, making connections, and facilitating relationships. As Carolyn told us, “We started creating a team environment with a daylong retreat, at which we began to identify our values, philosophy, and mission. We shared stories about families and loved ones and began to feel a sense of trust and respect for each other.” Carolyn understood that to create a climate of collaboration and trust, she needed to determine what the group members needed, build the team around mutual respect and a common purpose, and make each team member strong and efficacious.

In the thousands of leadership cases we’ve studied, like Carolyn’s, we’ve yet to encounter a single example of leadership that’s occurred without the leader’s actively involving and relying on the support and contributions of other people. Likewise, we haven’t found a single instance in which encouraging competition was the way to achieve the highest levels of performance. Quite the contrary, when at their personal best as leaders, people spoke passionately about teamwork and cooperation as the interpersonal route to success, especially when the conditions were urgent and extremely challenging. They understood that their fundamental leadership challenge was creating an environment in which people on their team, in the department, or with the program could do their work collaboratively. These leaders knew that for others to act at their best, they needed to trust one another.

The most effective leaders in higher education are those who most frequently Enable Others to Act. We asked direct reports how often their leaders engaged in the six behaviors associated with Enable Others to Act on the Leadership Practices Inventory, with assessments ranging from 1 (Almost never) to 10 (Almost always). We also asked them a separate question about the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statement Overall, this person is an effective leader (1 = Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree). The analysis showed that the effectiveness ratings of leaders by their direct reports increased systematically (p < 0.001) as leaders were observed engaging more and more frequently in the behaviors associated with enabling others to act. There was a 40 percent bump in effectiveness from the bottom to the top quartile.

CREATE A CLIMATE OF TRUST

Leaders put trust-building on their agendas; they don’t leave it to chance. It’s the central issue in human relationships within and outside organizations. Without trust you cannot lead. Individuals who are unable to trust others fail to become leaders precisely because they can’t bear to be dependent on the words and work of others. So they either end up doing all the work themselves or supervise work so closely that they become over-controlling micromanagers. Because they don’t trust other people, the result is that those people don’t trust them in return.

Psychologists find that individuals who are capable of trusting people are happier and more psychologically adjusted than those who view the world with suspicion and distrust.¹ Trusting individuals are also liked more by their peers and often sought out as friends. You listen more to those you trust and more readily accept their influence. The most effective leadership situations are those in which each member of the team trusts the leader, as well as one another.

Picture your faculty colleagues in a department meeting, your administrative colleagues in a program review meeting, or even a campuswide task force or governance committee. Now imagine that these people are involved in a role-playing exercise. They are given identical factual information about a tough policy decision (such as program budget cuts) and then asked to solve a problem related to that information as a group. Half of the groups are briefed to expect trusting behavior (“You have learned from your past experiences that you can trust the other members in your group and can openly express feelings and differences with them”); the other half are primed to expect untrusting behavior. Will you be surprised that there will be substantial differences in the ways the members of these two groups interact and problem-solve with one another?

Studies such as this one consistently show that the group members who were told they could trust their role-playing peers and manager reported that their discussion and decisions were significantly more positive on every factor measured than did the members of the low-trust group. Members of the high-trust group were more open about their feelings, experienced greater clarity about the group’s problems and goals, and searched for more alternative courses of action. They also reported greater influence on outcomes, satisfaction with the meeting, motivation to implement decisions, and closeness as a team as a result of the meeting.

In another simulation, participants were told that, based on past experiences, their manager could always be trusted or could not always be trusted. In those groups in which the manager was not to be trusted, people ignored or distorted genuine attempts by the manager to be open and honest. Distrust was so strong that members viewed the manager’s candor as a clever attempt to deceive them and reacted by sabotaging the manager’s efforts even further. Managers who experienced rejection of their attempts to be trusting and open responded in kind. Not surprisingly, more than two-thirds of the participants in the low-trust group said they would give serious consideration to looking for another position. People don’t want to work with people or in settings where there is little trust.²

It’s crucial to keep in mind that the incidents reported above actually occurred, but they were a simulation; the participants were role-playing! People behaved and responded as they did as a consequence of being told that they couldn’t trust one another. Their actions demonstrated that trust or distrust can come with a mere suggestion—and in minutes. Trust, quite simply, is a significant predictor of individuals’ satisfaction with their organizations.

You show that you trust people when you listen to them and provide opportunities for them to contribute freely, make choices, and be innovative. You demonstrate trust when you nurture openness, involvement, personal satisfaction, and high levels of commitment to excellence. Knowing that trust is essential, make sure that you consider alternative viewpoints, draw on other people’s expertise and abilities, and let others exercise influence over group decisions. People need to believe that they can rely on you to do what’s in everyone’s best interests. The feeling of we cannot happen without trust.

While trust is a reciprocal process, as the leader you have to be the one who antes up first. “Why should I trust my supervisor,” one library staff member told us, “when she doesn’t ever seem to trust me?” This sentiment was echoed by many people across campuses and was especially telling in hierarchical relationships. When the manager says, “Trust me,” but doesn’t by her actions demonstrate that she trusts others, or doesn’t take the time to listen and be open to being influenced, trust doesn’t blossom or flourish. Trust begets trust. The truth is that trust comes first; following comes second.

Facilitate Positive Interdependence and Cooperation

Millions of people have tuned in over the years to watch the “reality” show Survivor. With its competitive games, petty rivalries, backstab-bing betrayals, tribal councils, and cliffhanger endings, the show has survived 38 seasons and counting. It’s been ranked among the “best series of all times,” and both faculty and staff alike have sometimes suggested that the show is a case study in how to be successful in any organizational setting.

To us this conclusion is troubling, and we take strong exception to any real-life application. Riveting or not, Survivor and shows like it teach all the wrong lessons about how to survive in the “real world.” In the real world, let alone in higher education, if people were to behave as these players on television did, they’d all be dead. As the acclaimed anthropologist Lionel Tiger put it, “The contest format distorted savagely what would have otherwise been a very different outcome involving ongoing cooperation. The behavior on the island… is a reflection of the nature of the prize, and what winning it demanded. The goal of human survival has always been to endure for another day, and in the group.”³

One of the most significant aspects of cooperation and collaboration missing from Survivor is a sense of interdependence, a condition under which everyone knows that they cannot succeed unless everyone else succeeds—or at least that they can’t succeed unless they coordinate their efforts. If there is no sense of We are all in this together, that the success of one depends on the success of the others, it’s virtually impossible to set the conditions for positive teamwork.

The motivation for working diligently on your own job, keeping in mind the overall common objective, is reinforced when the end result is what gets rewarded and not the individual efforts. To make extraordinary things happen, people have to rely on one another. Leaders take an active role in creating both a positive context and a structure for cooperation and collaboration. The leaders who were reported as most often “developing cooperative relationships among the people they work with” were viewed by their direct reports, as illustrated in figure 5.1, as instilling the strongest feelings of team spirit.

This was very true in Susan Tomaro’s experience when she had the challenging assignment of planning a weeklong new-student orientation program during a time that overlapped with the Jewish High Holy Days. Not only would there be conflicting events but the two activities would be competing over the use of limited campus facilities. It was her first year in this position, and she immediately went to work to build strong relationships with the Office of Religious Life and Hillel.

Figure 5.1 The extent that leaders are viewed as developing cooperative relationships among the people they work with increases team spirit in their work groups.

Susan understood that she would not be able to argue that her program was more important than these religious holidays to those involved with them, nor would they be able to necessarily claim that this religiously important time trumped priority over use of the campus facilities. Susan understood that they needed to work together to resolve potential conflicts. What she did was “provide information about the various challenges we all faced and seek everyone’s help to change the way we would do things this time around. I asked people on all sides to think outside the box and recognize that the issues could be resolved only by getting many people involved and working together. Nobody was going to be successful without the support of everyone working together with one another.” A zero-sum solution would not be to anyone’s benefit.

Leaders, like Susan, appreciate that collaboration results from people understanding that they have to rely and depend on one another for their mutual success. With this realization, asking for help and sharing information comes naturally. Because they see themselves in a mutually beneficial relationship, finding and setting a common goal is not problematic.

Charlie Slater also understood the importance of positive interdependence and collaboration when talking about his Personal-Best Leadership Experience. In the successful development and implementation of the university’s first doctoral program, Charlie told us that “there were many leaders” and that this accomplishment would not have been possible “without the leadership and cooperation of so many people.” Everyone was willing to cooperate with one another, assuming complementary roles to move the possibility into reality. The university’s president started the ball rolling. Charlie and a small group of faculty then worked together to advocate for the program and to keep pushing the project along. Throughout the process, different individuals and groups enabled others through advocacy, reconciliation, and negotiation.

For example, a veteran faculty member came forward at a key point to lend support. By emphasizing the group’s shared beliefs and couching them in moral terms, she was able to reconcile competing factions. Charlie explained that her efforts were “crucial to connecting the university’s mission and values to the doctoral program.” By helping faculty acknowledge these shared beliefs, Charlie’s colleagues were able to make the time to develop a curriculum, establish learning objectives and research standards, and continue their commitment to these tasks amid other demands.

Whether it’s launching a doctoral program, designing a new campus facility, changing personnel benefits, bringing updated software online, shifting financial record-keeping systems, instituting new safety procedures for science labs, or expanding public safety protocols, for people to work together as a team you have to ensure that they have a specific reason for being together and cooperating with one another. Make sure the people you are working with understand the goal they are working toward, feel a shared stake in the outcome, have an appreciation for the talents and resources individuals bring to the endeavor, and have the latitude necessary to be both imaginative and strategic. A focus on a collective purpose binds people in cooperative efforts. Shared values and visions serve this function for the long term, and group goals provide this same common focus for the shorter term. Only through shared goals and recognized interdependence in one another’s success can people diligently strive to devise integrative solutions.

Support Norms of Reciprocity

A sense of mutuality is essential to a productive long-term relationship. If one party always gives and the other always takes, the one who gives will feel taken advantage of, and the one who takes will feel superior. In that climate, cooperation is virtually impossible. To forge cooperative relationships, you must establish norms of reciprocity among all parties and within teams.

The power of reciprocity is dramatically demonstrated in a well-known study generally referred to as the “prisoner’s dilemma.” The dilemma is that two parties (individuals or groups) are confronted with a series of situations in which they must decide whether to cooperate. They don’t know in advance how the other party will behave. There are two basic strategies: cooperate (don’t say anything) or compete (blame the other party); and there are four possible outcomes based on the choices players make: win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, and win-win.

The maximum individual payoff comes when one player selects a non-cooperative strategy and the other player chooses to cooperate in good faith. In this “I win but you lose” approach, one party gains at the other’s expense. Although this might seem to be the most successful strategy—at least for the non-cooperative player—it rarely proves successful in the long run mainly because the other player won’t continue to cooperate in the face of the first player’s non-cooperative strategy. This typically leads to both parties deciding not to cooperate and attempting to maximize their respective individual payoffs. In the end both lose. When both parties choose to cooperate, however, both win, though in the short run the personal payoff for a cooperative move (win-win) is less than what it might be for a competitive one (win-lose).

Over the years researchers have found, amazingly enough, that when faced with such dilemmas the most successful strategy in the long run is quite simple: cooperate on the first move and then do whatever the other player did on the previous move. This strategy succeeds by eliciting cooperation from others, not by defeating them.⁴ Simply put, people who reciprocate are more likely to be successful than those who try to maximize individual advantage.

Dilemmas successfully solved by this strategy are by no means restricted to the prisoner’s dilemma or theoretical research. You face similar dilemmas every day, both personally and professionally: Will others take advantage of me if I’m cooperative? Will it be worth the cost for me to maximize my personal gain? How much, if at all, should I compromise my interests so that others can achieve more of theirs?

Reciprocity turns out to be the most successful approach for such daily decisions because it demonstrates both a willingness to be cooperative and an unwillingness to be taken advantage of. As a long-term strategy, reciprocity minimizes the risk of escalation: If people know that you’ll respond in kind, why would they start trouble? And if people know that you’ll reciprocate, they know that the best way to deal with you is to cooperate and become beneficiaries of your cooperation. Honor codes succeed on this principle, as do goodwill gestures between public safety and campus housing, as well as negotiations between various faculty councils and their staff counterparts.

Reciprocity leads to predictability and stability, which in turn can keep relationships and negotiations from breaking down.⁵ The knowledge that goals are shared and that people will reciprocate in their efforts to achieve them makes working together less stressful. Improved relationships and decreased stress are obviously fine outcomes under any circumstances.

Foster Face-to-Face Interactions

Group goals, reciprocity, and rewarding joint efforts are all essential for collaboration to occur, but positive face-to-face communication has the most powerful influence on whether intended results are achieved.⁶ This need for face-to-face interaction increases with the complexity of the issues. For example, in working through many of the scheduling challenges around new-student orientation, Susan had many one-onone discussions with key players across the campus who could help think through the issues and effect change—“enlisting their help and working collaboratively.” In the end Susan told us that she became very good friends with a number of central partners, including the campus rabbi, as a consequence of these many interactions.

Look for ways you can provide frequent and lasting opportunities for team members to associate and intermingle across disciplines and between departments (or schools, colleges, programs, or divisions). As handy as virtual tools such as email, voicemail, apps, and texts are for staying in touch, they are no substitute for positive face-to-face communication. Just showing up is far more effective in building successful relationships.

One of the benefits of the leadership development program that Kelly McInnes co-created with campus leaders is that all members of the cohort each year are on the same campus, which makes it possible for collaboration and connection to continue even when the program has ended. When participants initially asked her, “What’s next?” she put the responsibility back on them: “What can you do to stay together? What do you think is next?” One of the department heads in the program piped up and offered to set up a time outside their training sessions to get together at a local pub—he’d even buy the first round. “That’s really all you need,” Kelly said. “You just need to get them in the same space together. I can facilitate the logistics—time and place, provide a little bit of coordination. That’s all you need to do to keep the relationships, and learning from shared experiences, going.”

When people expect their interactions to continue into the future (e.g., they’ll run into one another at some campus event, they’ll continue to serve on this committee for several years, participate in a subsequent task force, attend another game or performance), they are much more likely to cooperate in the present. Knowing that you have to deal with someone in the future ensures that neither you nor they will easily forget about how you’ve treated one another. When future interactions are likely to be frequent, the consequences of today’s actions on tomorrow’s dealings are that much more pronounced. In the end, enduring relationships are more likely to produce collaboration than short-term ones, and you have every incentive as a leader to build such relationships for yourself and for the people in your department or program.

Kelly, in fact, goes out of her way to deliberately walk around her campus, not merely to enjoy its beauty but because “a big part of it is that inevitably I run into somebody that I wouldn’t otherwise see. Walking around creates the possibility for these serendipitous bumps.” This allows her to strike up conversations that she might not have been able to have, thereby sustaining longer-term relationships and even learning about things taking place on campus that she might not otherwise know about.

Produce Social Capital

The new currency of the information age and the IoT (Internet of Things) is not intellectual capital; it is social capital—the collective value of the people we know and what we’ll do for one another. When social connections are strong and numerous, there’s more trust, reciprocity, information flow, collective action, and even happiness.⁷ Therefore part of your personal agenda should be to get connected to the sources of information, resources, and influences you will need to make a difference. Make sure you also connect your colleagues and constituents to each other and to those on the outside who are central to key networks. It will make them more effective, more engaged in critical tasks, and more satisfied with their lives and work.

The most well-connected individuals are typically those who have been most involved in many campus activities. They haven’t been typecast in one discipline, pedagogy, function, administrative body, or community. They’ve moved in and out of a range of assignments, committees, and experiences. They know people from a wide range of departments and programs, and they have made connections across faculty, staff, and even student, alumni, and community domains. They’ve honed their interpersonal skills and knowledge so that they’re credible to their constituents, and they’ve not dug themselves into a rut. Most college campuses are organized into discrete units, promoting specialization, but when it comes to leadership, you have to draw on your connections. If those connections are in only your specialty, it’s likely that you’ll be less influential than you could be if your connections cross a lot of boundaries. When it comes to social connections, there’s a real long-term payoff in mining deep and wide.

For example, when he was dean, Douglas Farenick undertook a significant revision of the science school’s document that described the assignment of faculty duties, performance standards, allocation of sabbaticals, and the like. He was well aware that any changes would require buy-in by a majority of the faculty and could not be imposed from the top down. The faculty would need to trust and endorse the dean’s philosophy behind any changes. Doug used the social capital he had developed, asking six faculty members whom he had productive relationships with, and who represented both the discipline and the gender diversity of the institution, to consider the possible changes, draft the proposed revisions, and select one of their members to present the rationale to the faculty as a whole. Consequently, the policy changes came from respected faculty members who had deeper and more personal ties with the faculty as a whole than the dean did, and produced greater acceptance than any hierarchical decision would have.

In an era that is becoming more and more dependent on virtual connections, there’s a temptation to believe that such connections automatically lead to better relationships and greater trust. The hitch is, there really is no such thing as virtual trust.⁸ Virtual trust, like virtual reality, is still one step removed from the real thing. People are social animals; it is our nature to want to interact face-to-face. If this weren’t true, you might as well abandon having faculty in the classroom altogether and let wireless personal digital assistants do all the teaching. Bits and bytes make for a fragile social foundation. This may sound heretical in a world driving itself more and more to depend on electronic connections, but you have to figure out how to combine and balance the benefits of technology with the social imperative of human contact. Data and information may be virtually shared, but ensuring understanding, sensitivity, knowledge, and action online or at a distance are kinks still to be worked out.

GENERATE POWER ALL AROUND

Exemplary leaders make those around them feel strong and capable. They make it possible for people to take responsibility for success—and ownership of it—by enhancing their competence and self-confidence. Exemplary leaders listen to others’ ideas and act on them, involve others in important decisions, and acknowledge and give credit for others’ contributions. Long before empowerment was written in to the popular vernacular, exemplary leaders understood how vital it was that their constituents felt proficient and effective.

Feeling powerful—literally, feeling able—comes from a deep sense of being in control of life. People everywhere share this inclination, and when they feel able to determine their own destiny and believe that they can mobilize the resources and support necessary to complete a task, they persist in their efforts to achieve. But when people feel that they are controlled by others and believe that they are unsupported or lack the necessary resources, they show little to no commitment to excel (although they may still have to comply). Leadership behaviors that increase another’s sense of self-confidence, self-determination, and personal effectiveness make that individual more powerful and greatly enhance the possibility of their achieving success. Gallup surveys involving millions of people around the world decidedly show that the extent to which people feel powerful and engaged in their work is directly linked to positive organizational outcomes, such as productivity, commitment, and retention.⁹

Creating a climate on campus where people are involved and feel important is at the heart of strengthening others. Correspondingly, you have to provide them with the latitude to make decisions based on what they believe should be done. You must provide an environment both that builds their ability to perform a task or complete an assignment and that promotes a sense of self-confidence in their judgment. People must experience a sense of personal accountability so that they can own their achievements. Exemplary leaders help others learn new skills and develop their existing talents, as well as provide the institutional supports required for ongoing growth and change. In the final analysis, you are turning your constituents, the people you work with, into leaders.

Ensure Self-Leadership

Leaders accept and act on this paradox: You become most powerful when you give your own power away. This is precisely the realization that Mark Delucchi shared in his Personal-Best Leadership Experience, which arose in connection with a Habitat for Humanity Collegiate Challenge. Quite simply, Mark gave students the power and the authority to carry out their assignments and jobs: “Although I tried to instill in them what I thought was important, I had them articulate what it was they wanted from this experience. I gave them the space and resources to achieve the goals as they defined them.” Mark took this approach not simply with the group but with each individual. For example, when the student coordinator came to him with a question, Mark’s response was, “It’s your show. What do you want to do?” Mark encouraged people to run with their ideas and to see what they came up with. If something went wrong, “I was right there to help them learn and then move on.”

Traditional thinking promotes the archaic idea that power is a fixed sum: If I have more, you have less. Naturally, people with this view hold tightly to the power that they perceive is theirs and are extremely reluctant to share it with anyone. This notion is wrongheaded and inconsistent with all the evidence on high-performing organizations. As Mark found out, he didn’t lose any influence with the group or on the project because “it really was their show.” Being a leader, Mark explained, “requires you to give up something. By giving some of the responsibility to others, they become invested and passionate about the project. Then my job becomes finding ways to help them see how it all comes together. But you’ve got to believe in the capabilities of your team to make this work.”

From her experience in higher education, especially as the university’s training and organizational development director, Lori Ann Roth seconded Mark’s experience: “It’s not really about giving your power away,” Lori explained. “What you are giving is an opportunity for people to make their own ‘power’—not giving them power per se but giving them an opportunity to create, to make decisions, and to feel that they are in control.”

Research solidly backs up Lori’s and Mark’s viewpoint. Researchers have found that the more people believe that they have some degree of influence and control in their organization, greater organizational effectiveness and member satisfaction follow. Shared power results in higher job fulfillment and performance throughout the organization.¹⁰

When you make other people powerful, in both tangible and intangible ways, you are demonstrating profound trust in and respect for their abilities. When leaders help others grow and develop, that help is reciprocated. People who feel capable of influencing their leaders are more strongly attached to those leaders and more committed to effectively carrying out their responsibilities.¹¹ They own their jobs, feeling and accepting accountability for their actions and results and being compelled in many ways to not let their leaders’ expectations and trust in them dissipate.

Provide Choices

If you desire higher levels of performance and greater initiative, you must be proactive in designing work that allows people choice in what they do. In other words, they need to have discretion; that means being able to take nonroutine action, exercise independent judgment, and make decisions that affect how they do their work without having to check with someone else.

The deliberations and decisions that Charlie Slater had to deal with in developing that new doctoral program were far from routine. He made sure that any proposal he brought forth to various constituency groups (like the faculty senate) provided them with options from which to choose about how the program would be introduced and shaped. He did the same for the first group of students who were actually enrolled in the program before its formal launch. In developing an alternative spring break, Kent Koth made sure that while everyone had the same “big picture” in mind, students had lots of choices about how they would structure their daily activities, both individually and collectively.

In these ways leaders, like Charlie and Kent, foster not only a sense of but also actual ownership among those who will be responsible for the program or project’s success and vitality. Choice fuels people’s sense of power and control over their lives, and the data backs up this claim. The sense of feeling highly productive dramatically increased the more often people reported that their leaders “give people a great deal of freedom and choice in deciding how to do their work,” as shown in figure 5.2.

You want people to take the initiative and be self-directed. You want them to think for themselves and not continually ask, “What should I do?” This ability cannot be developed if you constantly tell people what to do and how to do it. They really can’t learn to act independently unless they get to exercise some degree of autonomy. If they have no freedom of choice and can operate only in ways prescribed by the organization, how can they respond when a student, alumnus, or colleague behaves in ways that aren’t in the script?

Figure 5.2 Leaders viewed as giving people freedom and choice in deciding how to do their work increase direct reports’ sense of being productive.

If people have to ask the “bosses” what to do—even when they know what needs doing and feel they can do it—this process slows down the entire organization. And if their bosses don’t know, they will have to ask their managers, and up the organizational ladder it goes. The only way to have an efficient and effective organization is by giving people the power to use their best judgment in applying their knowledge and skills. Doing so is an explicit exercise in trust.

As necessary as choice is, it is insufficient. Without the knowledge, skills, information, and resources to do a job expertly—and without feeling competent to effectively execute the choices that it requires—people feel overwhelmed and disabled. This means you’ll need to ensure that you’ve prepared them to make these choices and that you’ve educated them in the guiding principles of the organization. Even when people have the resources, however, there may be times when they aren’t sure they’re allowed to use them or that they will be backed up if things don’t go as well as expected.

Build Competence and Confidence

People can’t do what they don’t know how to do. So, when you increase your constituents’ latitude and discretion, you also have to increase expenditures on training and development, as well as provide opportunities to learn on the job. People may be reluctant to exercise their judgment, in part because they aren’t sure about how to perform critical tasks and possibly out of fear of making mistakes. Research on “Great Place to Work” companies illustrates that “ensuring that employees are given the training they need and involving them in decisions that impact their work creates both competence and commitment.”¹²

Strengthening others requires upfront investments in initiatives that develop people’s competencies and foster their confidence. Leaders know that if people are to feel strong, they must be continuously improving and developing their skills and abilities. Leaders know that they need to share information and resources with constituents. The confidence to do well is critical in the process of strengthening others. Just because individuals know how to do something doesn’t necessarily mean that they will do it.

Faced with a lack of skills in some of the admissions office staff, Holly Wang made time to work alongside each team member, showing and talking with them about how to handle various situations. When a critical issue arose, she quickly brought the entire team together and walked them through her thought processes on how to address the dispute and fix the problem—with the clear expectation that the next time they could handle it on their own. She also set up temporary partnerships in which each partner got to know the other better, and this cross-training helped develop both partners’ skills. Along with more confidence came better understanding and trust in each other. Educating, training, and coaching the other team members built self-confidence, and Holly’s team became even stronger.

Enabling others to act is not just a practice. It’s a crucial step in a psychological process that affects intrinsic needs for self-determination. To experience some sense of order and stability in their lives, all people have an internal need to influence other people and life’s events. Leaders take actions and create conditions that strengthen their constituents’ self-esteem and inner sense of effectiveness. Feeling confident that they can cope with events and situations puts people in a position to exercise leadership.

Without sufficient self-confidence, people lack the conviction necessary to take on tough challenges. The absence of self-assurance manifests itself in feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and crippling self-doubt. Building self-confidence involves developing people’s inner strength to plunge ahead in uncharted terrain, to make tough choices, to face opposition, and to meet surprises serenely because they believe in their skills and decision-making abilities.

Empirical studies document how self-confidence can affect people’s performance. In one study participants were told that decision-making was a skill developed through practice. The more they worked at it, the more capable they became. Another group of participants was told that decision-making reflected their basic intellectual aptitude. The higher their underlying cognitive capacities, the better their decision-making ability would be.

Both groups worked with a series of problems in a simulated organization. Participants who believed that decision-making was an acquirable skill continued to set challenging goals for themselves, used good problem-solving strategies, and fostered organizational productivity. Their counterparts who believed that decision-making ability was inherent (that is, you either have it or you don’t), lost confidence in themselves as they encountered difficulties. They lowered their aspirations for the organization, their problem-solving deteriorated, and organizational productivity declined. Interestingly, those participants who lost confidence in their own judgment tended to find fault not so much with themselves as with their people, and they were quite uncharitable toward others, regarding them as unmotivated and unworthy of supervisory attention.¹³

As these studies—and probably your own experience—underscore, having confidence and believing in your ability to handle the job, no matter how difficult, is essential to promoting and sustaining consistent efforts. Fostering self-efficacy is not a warmed-over version of the power of positive thinking. Leaders communicate their belief that people can be successful. This sentiment was evident in people’s Personal-Best Leadership Experiences: someone believed in them and gave them the chance to make something extraordinary happen. Knowing that someone expected them to succeed motivated them to extend themselves and to persevere in the face of any hardships or setbacks.

Foster Personal Responsibility and Accountability

Accountability is a critical element in every collaborative effort. When people take personal responsibility and are held accountable for their actions, their colleagues will be considerably more inclined to want to work with them and be generally more cooperative. Everyone has to do their part for a group to function effectively. Personal accountability is enhanced when you structure a situation so that people have to work collaboratively with one another. Knowing that your peers are expecting you to be prepared and to do your job is a powerful force in motivating people to do well. The feeling of not wanting to let the rest of the group down strengthens people’s resolve to do their best. Additionally, the more people believe that everyone else is competent and taking responsibility for their own part of the job, the more trusting and cooperative they’re going to be. It’s also true that people will be more committed to doing their part when they are confident that others will be doing theirs.

When you explicitly give people the freedom to make choices, you are implicitly increasing the degree of personal responsibility they must necessarily accept. The interconnectedness between choice and accountability takes on increasing importance in virtually linked global workplaces. As Holly’s Personal-Best Leadership Experience revealed, to foster accountability she needed to delegate authority and give others a chance to take ownership. She realized that by trusting others with responsibility, she was letting them know that she believed in them and had confidence in their abilities and judgment. Given the level of trust Holly demonstrated in them, they in turn felt greater motivation to follow through on their commitments. When you allow others to take on more responsibility, you also benefit by being freed up to take on new duties and learning opportunities yourself.

Some people are reluctant to share power because they contend that cooperative endeavors minimize individual accountability. They think that if people are encouraged to work collectively, somehow they’ll take less responsibility for their own actions than if they are encouraged to compete or to do things on their own. Some people, it’s true, will become social loafers, slacking off while others do their jobs for them. But that doesn’t last long because their team members will quickly tire of carrying the extra load. Either the shirker steps up to the responsibility or the team wants that person out. Part of your job is to set up conditions that enable each and every team member to feel a sense of ownership for a successful outcome.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: ENABLE OTHERS TO ACT

you can’t do it alone is the mantra of exemplary leaders—and for good reason. You just can’t make a difference all by yourself. Fostering collaboration enables departments, programs, schools, and other alliances to function effectively. Collaboration can be sustained only when you promote a sense of mutual reliance—the feeling that We are all in this together. Common goals and roles contribute to mutual interdependence. Knowing that others will reciprocate is the best incentive for helping others achieve their goals. Help begets help just as trust begets trust. Focusing on what’s to be gained fosters agreement in what might otherwise be divisive issues. Create a trusting climate by the example you set. Make sure that key constituents are able to make human contact with one another. Work to make these interactions durable and connect people to multiple sources of influence and information.

Leaders turn their constituents into leaders—making people capable of acting on their own initiative. You strengthen others when you enable them to exercise choice and discretion, when you develop in them the competence and confidence to act and to excel, and when you foster the accountability and responsibility that compels action. Exemplary leaders use their power and influence in service of others because they know that capable and confident people perform best.

In developing your competence in the leadership practice of Enable Others to Act, spend some time reflecting on the following questions. After you’ve given them sufficient consideration, let others know what you are thinking and willing to do.

How can you provide people with an opportunity to grow, develop, and stretch in their jobs? Where can you empower people to take on more responsibility and accountability?

What can you do to share more information and responsibility with people in your group? How can you keep them more informed and in the loop about what’s going on outside the boundaries of your unit or function?

Where can you make connections for your team with others in the larger institution—and in doing so provide new experiences? How can you connect people outside your group with people on your own team?

How can you demonstrate your belief that people can learn, innovate, and make even more of a difference? Where can they exercise more latitude and discretion than they currently are?