Making Shift Happen Intentional Leadership Series Article 9 Leadershift Deep Dive: From Telling to Asking

Welcome back to our Making Shift Happen Intentional Leadership series! By popular demand, we are taking a deep dive into our second leadershift “From Controlling to Trusting”, more specifically into our 4 Cs of Empowerment model.

Putting the 4 Cs of Empowerment model into practice, one of the key habits we need to develop in order to move from controlling to trusting is to ASK instead of TELL. Here, our guiding principle is:?

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Especially in busy day-to-day operations, leaders might resort to telling people what to do—the so-called top-down way of managing. However, this practice has multiple shortcomings: it inhibits ownership and takes away from our team’s agency. It stifles the unique talents of our teams and their curiosity. So how can we avoid the habit of telling people what to do, and instead empower our teams, and allow them to surprise us with their solutions? It’s all about asking the right questions.?

What does that mean?

Asking the right questions assumes that we trust our teams to take ownership and deliver tasks themselves instead of being told what to do. It means that instead of giving restrictive instructions or provide solutions, we create a scaffold of powerful questions which allows them to find the solutions themselves. This process has been known since ancient Greece, where famous philosopher Socrates practiced his Socratic method, a dialogue that is entirely based on questions and answers to draw out ideas and stimulate independent thinking.?

Why is it important??

Asking powerful questions enables our teams to think more independently. It enables us as leaders to view our teams as resources of expertise and solutions that we would not have come up with by ourselves. It sees our team members as individuals with their own history, experiences, and creativity, and thus allows them to be fully involved in the projects they work on. It also allows them to create a more personal involvement with our projects which strengthens self-confidence at work and creates a stronger bond to the team and the work they do.

How do we do it?

To help you empower your teams by providing the appropriate coaching, we have developed the Making Shift Happen FRAME Model of Coaching to Empower:

The Making Shift Happen FRAME Model of Coaching to Empower

Using this FRAME Model is a key habit and component of our empowerment process. Because remember: Empowerment is not a once-off action, but a process! When will you use the FRAME Model? Let us know in the comments!?

Thank you! Thanks to my Making Shift Happen?colleague Anne Mahler, PhD for?her?help in creating this article series. Thanks also to you, the reader for tuning in. See you?for our next instalment when we take a closer look at the seventh leadershift to help you become a more intentional leader!?