A good leader knows that confidence is key to building an empowered team.
Your confidence sets the tone in how your team can engage with you. It also builds trust, because your team feels secure in your expectations and knows you have their back.
The more confidently you lead, the more empowered your team will feel to solve problems on their own.
In this blog post, we are going to share strategies for leading with confidence.
1. Take care of yourself in order to lead others
You can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s imperative that you take care of YOU so that you can take care of those on your team and your clients.
Leaders are prone to reversing this. They burn themselves out serving everybody except themselves. The result is they feel depleted mentally, emotionally and physically.
Related resource: Stop Normalizing Burnout
When you lead yourself by honoring your morning routine and enlisting the support of an Executive Assistant to protect your time, you will feel more stable and therefore more confident in your business decisions.
2. Be clear about your expectations and standards for success
One of our favorite quotes is, “what you allow is what you teach.” If you neglect to clarify your expectations, you will by default encourage different levels of performance. This can breed confusion among team members to know: what does success look like?
Setting expectations creates shared meaning by unifying your team around a single vision. Confidently set those standards so your team can deliver!
Make sure your expectations are clearly communicated, and be transparent if they change. Not only that, it’s important that you walk the talk. If you have a standard that emails are responded to within 24 hours, you better do what you are asking of your team.
3. Know when to say ‘no’
There are some leaders who are very detached from the teams they serve. Others who are too involved in the daily operations.
If you’re prone to dropping all of your priorities in order to help someone on your team, you need to start saying “no.” Being too available cripples your team from learning how to solve problems by themselves.
Get in the habit of pushing back: have you referenced that question against our list of SOPs? Do I have to be the one to help you with this, or can someone else provide assistance?
Related resource: Do You Have Someone in Your Corner That Will Call The Fight?
Protecting your time requires confidence and boundaries. It’s a hard, learned skill. However, it teaches your team that they can figure things out without you. That is a step toward empowerment.
This doesn’t mean you aren’t available to remove roadblocks. If your team member needs something they don’t have to do their job well, it’s your responsibility to equip them!
But, your confidence in the value of your time will teach your team how to engage with you and will help them become more self-sufficient.
Just because you say “no” doesn’t mean you don’t have your team’s back. You can provide support without having to personally hold their hand!
