This video explores the concept of empowerment through Bill Oncken’s five levels of empowerment. Focusing on personal and team development, it emphasizes the importance of gradually increasing responsibility within a team. The author delves into the challenges faced by leaders in sharing responsibility and highlights the significance of trust-building. The five empowerment levels are discussed, ranging from waiting for instructions to taking autonomous action and periodically reporting. The video encourages leaders to initiate experiments with team members, fostering a culture of empowerment. Key themes include leadership, teamwork, communication, conflict resolution, and embracing change. Overall, it provides practical insights for fostering personal and team development.
Transcript
This is about when and how to share responsibility with your people. It comes from the work of Bill Oncken, his 1987 book called “Managing Management Time,” and I love his subtitle, “Who’s Got the Monkey?” His point was that whoever owns the responsibility for getting something done can be said to have the monkey on their back. We have this expression in English: somebody has the monkey on their back, meaning they’re the one carrying the load of responsibility. The question is, who’s got the monkey? Quite often, the boss is reluctant—the manager, maybe you. If you’re a team leader or manager, you may be reluctant to share responsibility with your people, maybe for good reason. But you’re not sure you can trust them. Bottom line is, you’re not sure you can trust them to do it properly, do it well, do it the way you would do it. There are all kinds of reasons. If, in fact, you have to decide everything, then you actually become a kind of narrow gate through which all the work of your unit has to flow. And boy, that means you better be right all the time. The downside of that, of course, is that all these hopefully very smart people around you, after a while, begin to think, what are we doing here? You know, if he or she has to make all the decisions, what’s the team for? So Bill Oncken came up with this principle of empowerment.
Quite often, organizations will say we need to empower our people. And that usually means this sort of jump from 0 to 1 or from 0 to 100, where suddenly now you’re supposed to trust everybody about everything all the time. And it’s a disaster because not everybody is ready to take the responsibility. These are the principles that Bill Oncken came up with that I think are really important. The first principle is that the freedom to do something on your own is not an inherent right. It doesn’t come with being hired. You have to earn it. So if you want to be empowered to do something, you better earn the right to do it. You can’t just show up and then be empowered to do it. The boss is the one who grants the autonomy and the freedom to do that or not. So no matter how good you are, no matter how trustworthy you are, the boss has to see that, and the boss is the one that has to decide that any degree of lack of trust can be overcome gradually if both the boss and the subordinate are willing to work on it. This is the process I’m going to show you in a minute. Let’s say that if you’re the boss and you have somebody that’s not quite ready for something, there is a way to work with that person to help them be ready to be responsible, to be able to do the work without just jumping into something where they fail miserably.
Finally, the level of empowerment will change based on the issue, the time allowed for a particular task, the level of experience—all these things will come together, and you’ll see right away which level of empowerment of the five is appropriate for this person on this issue, given these situations. So let me lay out the five levels of empowerment, and we’ll come back to how you can apply them. The lowest level of empowerment is: I wait for my boss to tell me what to do. I go and do it, and I report immediately. That’s level five, okay? I’m just like a lump. I wait, sit around, the boss tells me what to do, I go do it, and I report immediately. That’s level five. One level up, level four, a little more trust, a little more responsibility is: I ask my boss what to do. I go do it, and I report immediately. So now the initiative for asking comes from me. In level five, I just wait; the boss tells me what to do, and I go do it. Level four, I start thinking, hmm, maybe I should do this, and I go and ask my boss. That’s level four. Now level three is a very significant jump—more of a quantum leap.
In level three, I make a recommendation to my boss, get approval, go do it, and report immediately. Okay, now that’s a little different because in level three, I report immediately. I ask my boss, I come up with what I think should be done. “Boss, I think we should do this. Do you agree?” Yes. Okay, I do it, and I tell the boss immediately what happened. Level two says: I act on my own, and I report to my boss immediately. I don’t ask for permission. I just go do something and then say, “By the way, boss, I did this.” And level one is: I take action on my own, and I report to my boss periodically, occasionally, as agreed upon on a particular area. Now, you notice there’s a dotted line between level four and level three. If you’re the boss, you do not want anybody below that line. You do not want to have to tell people what to do. You do not want anybody sitting there waiting. You want people taking initiative and then deciding how fast you want them to report.
So here’s the deal: Think of someone now that you work with. I’m assuming you’re the boss. Think of someone you work with that you’d like to try this experiment with. Sit down with them and say, “On this issue or on this topic right now, I see you as level whatever—four, okay. I want to try an experiment. Will you work with me? I want you to be more empowered here. Let’s try a level three. Let’s try an experiment for a month or a week or whatever the number is. And then let’s sit down and talk about it.” And if that goes well, you might say, “Are you ready for a level two? I’m ready, are you ready?” So you are. I’m the one that’s managing the pace of empowerment. You, as a boss, are the one who can say, “This is enough now, now let’s try it later.” Now, if you’re a team member watching this and you want to be more empowered by your boss, show this video to your boss and say, “I’d like to become more empowered. I think it would help you help me develop, help the team. Here’s an area where I think I’d like to move up in a level of empowerment. Would you be willing to try an experiment with me?” I’m telling you, this will work. It works almost every time, especially if you agree to sit down and have a discussion on a regular basis about how this is working and who’s ready to move forward. Try this. Bill Oncken’s Five Degrees of Empowerment. I’m telling you, it’s a wonderful way to begin to share empowerment in a way where you don’t lose control, and you don’t lose too much sleep at night, whether you’re the boss or the subordinate. Give this a try. It works, I promise.
