Empowerment Mindset: Creating Owners, Not Renters, in Your Team

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And in a lot of respects, that's a reasonable point of view. Leaders come and go. So why not do what you need to do to create the least amount of disruption in your day to day work life? This is a common challenge for any leader. Coming into an organization. And it's especially challenging for those leaders coming into new technical teams.

So how do you overcome that challenge? Some might argue that the key to overcoming the challenge requires rapid engagement with everyone. That's at the line level. What if I told you that your first 90 days as a leader needs to have a different focus, that it needs to be focused substantially on aligning leadership and building business trust.

gument that Edward Carr, CIO [: 00:01:00

From his perspective, trust is the foundation of building successful teams and without it, you might have wins here or there, but you're not going to have sustained success and you're not going to have elite performance. So Ed, welcome to the show.

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[00:01:33] Dr. Jim: I'm pumped to have you on. We haven't had a ton of it leaders join the show, and I think this conversation is going to be particularly interesting to other leaders in general in our audience, but especially those technical leaders, because one of the gaps that they often encounter is getting buy in from their teams, especially when it comes to building leadership capability across their teams.

k it's going to be important [: 00:02:00

[00:02:12] Edward Carr: Thank you. Dr. Jim. I started my career with the state all the way back in June of 1992. I joined as a developer for a state agency, worked there for several years. And transition to another agency pursuing an opportunity and. Early in 1999, made the decision to become a supervisor.

It was maybe a little earlier than I as I look back, then I should have done it. But I really liked the leadership aspect and understanding what was going on. One thing that I struggled with as an employee was I felt uninformed about why we were doing what we were doing. I felt that I had an inbox.

do? Why wasn't I working on [: 00:03:00

And I clearly didn't need to know, and that didn't really work for me. I like to have a big picture context. I like to know why we're doing what we're doing. And I think most people in their career, it's a career for them. This isn't a job. If it was a job, that's different, right? You just do, the work that's put in front of you.

But this is my career. This is my profession. I'd like to have an understanding of the big picture goals and why. I'm doing the work that I'm doing

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And you made the comment that maybe that was a little bit too early. So when you think back to those early days, What were some of the things that you weren't prepared for as a leader [00:04:00] that you feel that any new leaders that are listening to this conversation need to have on their radar so they don't make the same mistakes that you made as a first time leader.

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And certainly there's people that you take good lessons from, and there's people that you look at what they do and say, if I'm, when I get my chance to be a supervisor, if I get my chance, I'm going to do it a little different than what they've done it or than how I've seen them do it. So that.

of the common themes I [: 00:05:00

And going back to my earlier statement, I want to understand what's going on. I want to understand the big picture context and the age old question, what's in it for me. I, if I know where the organization is going, I can be better engaged. So that has set the basis for my leadership style is engaged.

Informed employees can be engaged employees. And I made it a goal of mine that when I had the opportunity, I would make sure that my team knew what was going on with some open, honest, and transparent communication for me.

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When you fast forward to now, how [00:06:00] does that period of, Your development inform how you develop those managers and individual contributors in your organization. Now?

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People say you're always interviewing for your next job. I like to build or build with empowerment and treat my direct reports. I like to empower them to do their job. If if I'm doing their job, 1 of us is redundant, as people like to say. If I can empower people on my team and trust them to do their job.

ortunities are. I need to be [: 00:07:00

[00:07:17] Dr. Jim: I liked the element of your answer where you said one of your responsibilities, and I'm paraphrasing is to develop more leaders. And the way that you do that is through empowering the people underneath you to do their jobs. So let's, take it down and be really tactical about it.

When you say, I want to empower my team or I empower my team for them to do their job and also build the next generation of leaders. What are a couple of things that you do on a consistent basis that allows for space for that to happen?

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You're an owner of your area. If something's not right in your area, fix it. You don't have to ask me permission to do the right thing. So I can empower you. And trust you to own your area. Then I can extend further trust as you do that. It's, really, it's that simple. If I know that you, I can trust you to do the right thing for the business.

And being an owner of your responsibility, I can empower and continue to grow on that empowerment. And then we can go into areas of new territory for you that you want to grow into and learn to advance your career.

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[00:09:00] And when we're thinking about how do we motivate the people underneath us to take ownership we, it's up to us as leaders to demonstrate what good looks like. And if we're ignoring the smaller trivial stuff and letting that go by, that can have a cascading effect downstream. Now that doesn't mean that you need to lose your mind over every single little detail.

ctually, make that impact be [: 00:10:00

[00:10:13] Edward Carr: so I had a very good example of what you're describing early in my career where a new leader came in. I was still a developer at the time. New leader comes in and within the 1st week on the job reorganizes the team. I didn't think that was right and appropriate. And sure enough, within two months, the reorganization was basically undone because it didn't make sense.

I think it's, I think as a leader, it's an imperative that you go in and you get to know the organization. It's said so much that it sounds cliche, but people truly don't care until they know how much you care and as a new leader, I've been around the state a long time and I understand the B team mentality that I'd be here when you got here.

t I heard that earlier in my [: 00:11:00

So we need people to understand that I'm here to do the right thing for the business. I need my team to understand I'm here to do the right thing for the business. I want them to be successful. And if we can align on those things, we can create some great successes. And I think it's imperative that you start with your leadership team first.

As I said, a little bit ago, I want to empower people if I, can't empower people if I don't trust that they're going to be consistent with the message that I share with them,

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There. So why not focus on getting into the kitchens of the people that report into you? Why do you believe that it's a better course of action to work with the leadership tier first?

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If we are not aligned at a leadership level, at a management level, that alignment, that misalignment is going to Be exponentially worse at the front line level of our staff. They're just not going to hear the message that I, as a leader, want them to hear, and they may hear something totally different. In fact, [00:13:00] if we're not aligned as a leadership team, some people might have their own hidden agendas that they're out executing amongst their team.

And it may take weeks or months for me to uncover that and work to correct that. So that's why I think it's important to focus first on the leadership team and as important, Jim, I would say is. Meeting with the team, meeting with your team. I hold one on ones with my team. I held them frequently early on to get to know my team members.

First and foremost, on a personal level, I like to know a little bit about each member of my team, something that helps me connect with them. I also want to know who my leaders within the team are. Within each team, there's gonna be somebody that is gonna be able to move the dial more effectively than others, and if I can get them aligned with me and the vision I have along with my management team, can move the change dial even faster.

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And then you also have to satisfy The same things with people that are your peers and the people that you report into from the executive suite, that's a lot of juggling. What were the things that you did that helped thread that needle where you were satisfying not only the needs And requirements of your team, but your peers as well as your superiors as well.

How did you, what were the things that you put into place that met everybody's requirements so that you could actually build momentum going forward?

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Where it is meeting their needs, where it may be not meeting their needs as well. And then what I try to do, especially early on in that first 90 days for 30, 60 days, actually is look for quick win opportunities. If I have the opportunity to find a pain point that has plagued the organization, even if it's a small number of users, if I can correct that and get some tangible wins early on.

That helps to build momentum and it helps to reinforce my message that I'm here to serve the business. I found out when I got here that we had, faulty VDI implementation, virtual desktop implementation that our business users still use, but IT had abandoned because it just didn't work well, that made me question.

user satisfaction and better [: 00:16:00

[00:16:08] Dr. Jim: I think one of the challenges that many leaders, unless you're in a revenue function within an organization struggle with is connecting the dots between how does the work that I'm doing at the desk level connect to a bigger picture So how did you bridge that gap within your organization?

You're a new leader coming into, your, organization. You have a segment of people that might be just willing to wait you out. You have another segment that probably has no idea about the work that they're doing, how that connects to the bigger picture. How did you stitch all that together so that you started getting cohesion moving forward when, you're looking at driving towards those other bigger initiatives that you wanted to tackle.

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And that's, a bigger picture understanding of where the business wants to go and it's preparedness to help the business get there. So what I try and do is look for a series of. Things that we can do things that we can line up and address and get momentum to get everybody thinking let's make this better.

And again it all builds on each other because. A series of little wins start to build momentum starts to build confidence starts to build consistency and it's all about messaging and communication. And for me, meeting with my team and making sure they're on the same page is a top point of criticality.

e went to every other month, [: 00:18:00

And why it's important to the business is a critical theme in each of those all staff meetings.

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That all makes sense. I guess the question that I'm thinking about is if you're a new leader within an organization and you have all of these competing interests that exist within your organization. What are the things that you should be doing to build trust among your team so you can execute well?

the things that you put into [: 00:19:00

Thanks.

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And if it was tried and failed, it helps for you to know that occurred. And what you're going to do differently this time to help it be successful. I think it is a critical to keep that cadence of meeting with the team. We had, as I said, we had the all staff meetings and we continue to do those every other month.

t is aligned, it is a valued [: 00:20:00

For the agency, I need the team to understand that each of us has the opportunity to step up, do more. It's our responsibility to continue to earn a paycheck. That's another one of my little mantras is I ask people every two weeks when that pay gets deposited. It was more fun when you physically got a paycheck, but when that money gets deposited, ask yourself, did I earn it?

Now we're human beings. I know some weeks are going to be better than others. Some sometimes you're going to be like, maybe I'll work a little harder next time to make it up. But if more times than not, every member of our team can say I earned my paycheck, then we should be moving the organization in a positive direction.

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So I guess my question to you is, how is that a misguided viewpoint if you're looking at building a really strong organization? And the second part of the question is, how did you get around that specific complaint? When you try to shift the perspective or habits within the organization to focus in on more of these sort of activities versus like the technical execution stuff.

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I am an. Adamant proponent of soft skill development. I believe it's critical for any future leader to have strong soft skills and [00:22:00] recognize. It will always be true. We will only go as far as our people allow us to go. So we have to be able to have those conversations, have those interactions with our team members to help them grow, help them understand that the feedback that we are giving them is to help them improve, it's not punitive.

Certainly it can become that if troubles persist. However, the primary goal is to help you be more successful. Because the more successful you are, the more successful we are. And that's what the business needs from us. So just that constant drumbeat with my team of understanding, we're here to serve our business.

It is our obligation to do that. We have to work together effectively. For that to happen and that involves the use of soft skills and the tools that are available to us. I actually had each of my team members. We went each of them. Everyone on the management team goes through the desk profile and we share everybody's desk profile and talk about the particular styles there.

ually found some training on [: 00:23:00

Many conversations start with, hi, my name is Ed. What do you do? That's often the 2nd question. And if I have good job satisfaction, I can proudly tell people what I'm doing. If I'm in a place where I'm not enjoying my job, I don't really want to talk about it. want everybody on my team to be able to proudly let people know what they do what their team they're a part of.

And the contributions they make to help our team be successful. For

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So if you're creating an environment where everybody is just checking the box and just getting something done, you're never really going to advance to any of those higher level things that you need to advance as a leader to build a really strong team. Because if you think about it, if all you do is talk about, the technical side of it, you're not really connecting the dots between what's important to that person, how that shows up in the work that they do, how is that work connected to the bigger picture of the organization.

So at this point, you've just reduced the entire workday. Down to a paycheck. Everybody talks about Hey, we don't want clock punchers, but basically if you don't really take the time to connect with the people on your team and really understand them, you're going to have a team of clock punchers.

ng, but that's that's how it [: 00:25:00

[00:25:21] Edward Carr: Me, it's take the pulse of your team. Understand that if something is going on, that's negative by the time you know it as a leader, it's probably common knowledge across your team. And your team may be looking there, waiting to see if you're going to do something about it. Engaging with people is the only way you're going to find those things.

You need to spend time with your one on ones, make those meaningful meetings where people talk with you openly about what's going on. And many of those conversations that I have, a personal element to them. What's going on in your personal life? How's your family doing? I like to know that you are in a good place, right?

because if I'm, it's hard to [: 00:26:00

That's a key starting point for me and fundamentally having a vision for the organization that makes sense. If you're doing what's right for the business. It's hard for anybody to argue against that idea and that concept. If you can put that in front of people and get buy in that we're here to move this organization forward, we're going to put the business in the driver's seat.

And as IT, we're going to be their subject matter expert partners to help move them towards their goals. The people that have been here for years and the new people on the team, that's a vision that should resonate with them and help them get on board with, where you want to go.

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[00:26:58] Edward Carr: Over to you LinkedIn. [00:27:00] if you want to reach out to me

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Now, that doesn't mean that everybody needs to be. Completely obsessive about the work that they do, but they need to care about the details that are involved in the work. And as a leader, it's incumbent on you to take the first step and demonstrate what good looks like. So if you're thinking about wanting to build a high performance team, if you're not investing in the team, if you're not investing time and energy and finding out what is important to the people on your team, you're never going to get to the point where.

u've built depth across your [: 00:28:00

And in fact, you're probably going to be in a situation where a lot of people end up leaving your organization for. Better opportunities that align with their broader purpose.

Thanks for hanging out with us. Hopefully you enjoyed the conversation. Make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you haven't already done so make sure you join the community that can be found at www.

engagerocket. co slash HR impact, and then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.