Empowerment is a Product of Leadership

I had the honor to work with The McChrystal Group team on leadership two years ago. Earlier this week, I had another opportunity to attend a webinar by General McChrystal presented at the Founders Institute. As always, General McChrystal’s vision and clarity on leadership were awesome. These are not direct quotes but are a few takeaway I was able to capture from his talk based on my notes:

Decision Making in Complicated vs Complex Environment

There are differences between complex world and complicated world. In a complicated world, it is hard but things are still predictable. In a complex environment, the traditional hierarchical structured organizational model no longer work. Important things happen in the bottoms of the organization and people there need to be effective, and need to be empowered to make decisions. For empowered execution to occur, leaders need to, leverage technology, provide not just information, but also context of the information down to the organization they need to make decisions. General McChrystal shared a beautiful example of how an orchestra was able to perform without an conductor. “Empowerment is a product of leadership”

Working from Home During Pandemic or Working Remotely

It is about empowerment and trust. There is an hierarchical of digital interaction for engagement: email, interactive email, chat, phone call, video calls. For engaging remote workers, you need to travel out whenever you can. Go out and get a face to face that gives you a runway in a month to do digital. Practice digital leadership. Acknowledge people. Do not be cut and dry. Include humanity so that they do not feel left alone and ignored. When you are back to office after the pandemic, be intentional and interact with your team to create that bond.

Start-up Business and Deal with Failures

My plan was to create a good team of people and then figure out what we were going to do. We were adaptable. If you want to start a business, first and foremost, find the people you want to work with and create a team you want to be part of. Be honest about failure. Be absolutely forthright. If you leave gaps, people will fill the gaps and they will be terrified. Afterwards, you need to communicate the vision so that people know where you are going next. It is important to have someone you can lean on as safety net. It is also important to have something else in life (e.g. workout). Even if everything was going hell, you can still have something to work on.

All excellent advices on leadership! Thank you.

Related Articles

Empowering Employees for Success (1/28/2019)

Leaders: Myth and Reality (08/30/2019)

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