Leadership Success Pattern #8

In some of the most demanding environments, people are highly empowered without being allowed to define the direction. In the military, teams are expected to adapt quickly, use judgment, and act with initiative under pressure. Their empowerment is framed by clear intent, clear objectives, clear boundaries, and shared execution standards. This pinpoints the fundamental leadership understanding that autonomy and alignment are not in opposition but support each other when standardised procedures and clear intent provide the team members with common ground.

Some leaders miss this distinction.

In the name of involvement, engagement, or empowerment, they start letting their people guide their direction setting. They listen too broadly before clarifying the why and the what. They ask teams to act on priorities that were never made sufficiently clear. Or they assume that because employees are capable and motivated, direction should emerge from below.

That is not focused empowerment. It is a risk for fragmentation of initiatives. It shows up as uncoordinated priorities, local optimisation, slow trade-offs, and uneven accountability. People start solving based on their own interpretations of what to prioritise rather than on shared intent. The result is counterproductive ownership and weaker organisational execution.

I am not arguing against involving people. Quite the opposite. Over the past two decades, leadership research has shown strong performance benefits from more shared leadership, especially in organisations facing higher complexity, faster change and a stronger need for agility. The point is not that leaders should involve people less. They should involve the right people from the right starting point.

The right starting point for involvement is purpose and objectives.

Leaders should lead from the organisational intentions. In practice, this requires considering what contribution we are here to make, and what outcomes we are trying to achieve? From there, the leader should prepare his own understanding of the line of sight through the Results-Execution-Enablers chain. What results are required? What efforts are the key drivers to realise them? And what enablers – structures, capabilities, culture, tools and resources are necessary to enable and fuel the execution?

From the leader’s preparation, the next move creates real value: involving the people who will execute in interpreting what this means in practice and co-creating the action commitments.

That is where ownership and followership are built.

The sequence matters. If leaders involve people before reflecting on the line of sight, they often generate discussion without direction. If they clarify the purpose and objectives, consider the line of sight, and involve people in interpreting and committing, they generate ownership and followership that strengthen performance.

This is also where two leadership balances need to be considered. The opening-closing balance concerns the amount of variation that should be allowed. Some objectives and approaches could be open for interpretation and local decision-making. Other objectives, standards, and previous decisions are fixed are deliberately closed to discussion during the involvement process. The leader must be clear about what is open for discussion and change in the involvement process.

The directing-sharing balance concerns something different: the level of direct leader involvement versus empowerment. This should be a deliberate choice based on the leader’s judgement of the team’s expertise, the operating conditions, and the leader’s need to be directly involved in the discussions.

A leader can be very clear and closing on objectives, customer promises, risk boundaries, or operating principles, while fully opening the freedom to solve the task in the way the team finds best. That is often the best route to both alignment and initiative. Striking the balance requires preparation and case-by-case awareness. Whether the leader then wants to be directly involved or fully empower the team to figure out how can depend on the team’s experience, the risk involved or the leader’s need for insight.

The Results-Execution-Enablers logic works in both directions. Leaders and their teams can start from results and break them down into required execution actions and enabling conditions. But they can also start by discussing what they could gain from strengthening the enablers – develop new skill sets, hire different employee profiles, shift to new technology, automate or outsource part of the work – in order to lift execution quality and stretch the results the organisation can realistically achieve.

We have leaders to focus the organisation’s energy to achieve the maximum progress toward the organisation’s purpose and objectives. It requires the leader to navigate the opening-closing balance with clarity and, only thereafter, choose the most appropriate directing-sharing approach.