The hierarchy organization and top-down management style has slowly been eroded with a more collaborative communication style – one that demands all stakeholders be heard.
Diversity and inclusion has also become a big initiative, in which companies want to recognize minorities so that those groups are no longer oppressed and are instead respected for their differences.
More recently, employees are demanding work-life balance and the hybrid model, which would allow them to work at least part time from home. This would require trust, believing that employees know what is needed to get their job done.
What do all of these movements indicate? A need for the relocation of power and a flatter organizational style of decision making. It is a movement towards empowerment, where employees once felt oppressed in decision making.
To have a relocation of power, leaders need to understand the concept of locus of control. Locus of control is the degree to which people believe they have control over the outcomes of their lives, as opposed to outside sources dictating decisions for them. It is my experience, as a leadership coach for 33 years, that leaders don’t oppress their employees consciously. Yes, oppression is the result of dominance, but dominance is often the result of the fear of letting go and allowing someone else to make decisions. This can be a result from conditioning that tells leaders: They must have all the answers and be the smartest ones in the room to justify their position and salary.
To relocate the power back to the employees, there needs to be a paradigm shift first. The first paradigm shift is regarding the role of the leader. If the leader relocates the power to the employees, what is their role? In an organization where the leader relocates the power to the employee, the role of the leader is to watch over the company at a 10,000-foot level so they can notice shifts in the marketplace and be aware of their company’s corresponding strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that exist as a result. That means they must be keen on intuitively determining a S.W.O.T. Analysis quickly in order to pivot if necessary.
Secondly, instead of barking out orders, leaders must be curious so they can effectively engage the brilliance in their employees. This means their job would be to ask good questions to stimulate greater ideation, enthusiasm and ownership of the solution needed to succeed. In contrast, when leaders believe they are the only one who knows the right answer, they take the locus of control away from their employees and tell them what to do.
Finally, the role of a leader who shifts the power back to their key people would become the coach. This means they would stand on the sidelines and ask their employees, “What’s the plan to win this game with the current situation at hand?” By effectively presenting the indicators that require a new gameplan, the leader gives the locus of control back to the players to take ownership to win the game.
Remember: The best decisions = the solution + the buy-in
By allowing your key players to come up with the solutions and plan, leaders get greater buy-in.
Below are key areas to consider when measuring how well you relocate the power in your organization:
Mindset:
- Is the mindset in the organization one of fear, deprivation-thinking, constant change from upper management and top-down communication? If you have said “yes” to any of these questions, you still have not relocated the power to the employees.
Vision, values and goals:
- Is the S.W.O.T. Analysis shared with the employees so that they can buy into it?
- Are employees asked their opinion of the vision, values, goals and solutions to address the S.W.O.T. Analysis?
- Does management consider the input and show employees how the vision, values and goals were derived, based on this input?
- Do employees frequently collaborate over the action plans to attain the initiatives needed to succeed?
- Are employees enthusiastically engaged in the tasks needed to complete the initiatives?
- Do the leaders regularly coach, benchmark and celebrate progress to keep employees engaged?
If you said “yes” to most of these questions, you have effectively relocated the power to your key employees.
As you can see, relocating the power requires a leader to engage employees in the creation of the goals and plan of action. It also requires a continual engagement of problem solving and recognition of progress made. When an organization leads in this way, there is an effective relocation of power that ignites engagement and greater productivity.
