“Put me in, coach!” How to empower teams—and yourself
I’ve been lucky enough over the years to have some truly incredible mentors. Marty Schaffel was one of the first; if you’ve read Permission To Screw Up, you’ll remember that he’s the one who helped me learn how to hold people accountable with compassion.
Marty taught me so much about what it means to truly empower people. In some of our first mentoring sessions, we talked a lot about what it means to be a leader who empowers others to bring their best ideas forward.
One of my favorite stories that he shared with me (and that he wrote about in his new book, Management Nirvana) is about how a woman in his former company, Kelly, introduced him to e-commerce back when the Internet was just barely a thing.
Marty is the founder of AVI-SPL, and under his leadership, it grew to be one of the most successful audio-visual companies ever. One of their business lines involved selling projectors, but when he hired Kelly in the mid-’90s, they weren’t selling too many because there wasn’t much high-quality content available to project. Marty hired Kelly, who had a master’s degree in Art History and an intense interest in multimedia, to create content that would get people excited about the new ways they could use projectors in their businesses, classrooms, homes, etc.
Kelly did that, but she wanted to do more than just sell more projectors. She saw an opportunity to change how the company sold them. She came to Marty with a radical idea: She wanted to set up a website that would allow people to buy projectors online. Her argument was that if they were already willing to buy them over the phone using an 800 number, they would be willing to buy them through a website.
Though he was skeptical, Marty asked Kelly to look into it and get back to him. She had been learning how to code, and she figured out that she could make a website, code the shopping cart, and build an e-commerce server on her own. When she pitched the idea to Marty and the other company managers, they were hesitant. They wanted to start with a hybrid approach.
Kelly was adamant that this was the moment to be bold. She could see that the future of business was online, and she didn’t want Marty and his company to fall behind. She continued to challenge Marty and his perspective until finally, he asked her, “What will it take?”
She told Marty that all she needed was 30 days and a server. But Marty still wasn’t convinced—and Kelly was frustrated. In his book, Marty recounts what Kelly told him then: “I did what you asked. I showed you how it could happen. I showed you how it would come together. I’ll do the work. There’s no risk involved for the company. I don’t know how to present the case any better.” Then, Marty says, Kelly slapped her hands on his desk and said, “Put me in, coach!”
At long last, Marty gave his approval. On January 5th, 1999, Kelly and her team launched projectorpeople.com—a website that still runs today. They sold their first projector overnight, and Marty was amazed. That first year, the site was one of the top 100 highest revenue-producing websites. Like . . . what?!
In Management Nirvana, Kelly says of her experience with Marty: “I’m here, 24 years later, because of the empowering culture Marty built. He was an inspiring leader who promoted what he called an ‘intra-preneural’ environment. If people put the research in and were passionate about viable ideas, he’d back them, as he did with me.”
I love this story because of what it says about Marty as a leader—and, just as importantly, what it says about Kelly as a member of his team. She saw an opportunity to bring him a bold new idea that could change the way he did business, and he was willing to create an environment where she could run with that idea and eventually bring it to life. It took both Kelly’s belief in herself and her idea and Marty’s empowering leadership style to make it happen.
When I think about the people in my leadership journey who stood out to me, earned my trust, and helped move our organization forward, they are the ones who took action without asking permission; who brought new ideas forward and championed them; and who came to the table with solutions instead of only problems. I learned from Marty that empowerment isn’t a one-way street. Team members have to want to embody the mindset of someone who is fully empowered, and leaders have to create environments that allow people to step into being fully empowered. We all have a part to play in how empowered we can be.
With all that in mind, I want to share some things we can do to step into that empowered mindset and to create more empowering environments around us:
Challenge your limiting beliefs. Have you ever wanted to speak up about something to your leader, but a little voice in your head told you not to? Maybe it said, “I’m not good enough,” or, “I haven’t earned the right to speak up yet.” Maybe that voice told you that your ideas are pointless or that speaking up isn’t worth the potential rejection. These voices are tough to beat. Most of them stem from our limiting beliefs and feelings of self-doubt that we’ve dealt with since childhood. Some might be tied to imposter syndrome. Once thoughts like that surface, they’re hard to overcome, no matter what position you hold. The thing is that these voices keep ourselves and our organizations from becoming better. They keep people from sharing ideas, from confronting toxic leaders and practices, and from stepping up and taking action—often when leaders need support the most. It takes time and lots of self-work to unlearn these limiting beliefs, and when we do that, we become more impactful, helpful members of a team. You can use our guide to uncover and reframe your limiting beliefs here.
The 1:3:1. One of my favorite tools for empowering yourself and your team to find solutions is the 1:3:1. (If you’ve come to our Human Leadership Program, you know all about it!) It’s very simple:
1 = What is the screwup/setback/challenge?
3 = What are three ideas you have to approach it?
1 = Out of those three, what is your recommendation?
You can use the 1:3:1 to come up with your own ideas before coming to your leader. In some cases, you might be able to solve your challenge without needing to talk to your leader at all. In other cases, it allows you to come to the conversation with a solid starting point. Or, if you’re the leader and you want to give your team more ownership over solving a challenge, you can ask them to come back to you with their 1:3:1. By approaching it this way, you are giving our team ownership in the decision making.
Take a chance on leading “up.” I think it’s important to remember that even when you work in a place with a strict hierarchy, you are there for a reason. You bring important skills and knowledge to your role. Your leader needs you to do your job well so that they can do their job well. And sometimes, that means leading “up.” Sometimes, you have to be the one to present solutions, bring something to your leader’s attention, or come up with a new idea. In the past, when I’ve felt overwhelmed, I’ve always appreciated members of my team who stepped up to help. Oftentimes, I’ve needed their guidance more than they needed mine. Leading up isn’t you versus your leader; it’s about supporting them. It’s about being willing to collaborate with them on issues that would usually only fall to them. It’s about bringing solutions to the table and offering to run with them. And if your leader says, “Well, here’s why we can’t do that yet,” I challenge you to say, “By this date and time, if this hasn’t been resolved, could I have your support to move forward?” At the end of the day, your leader is a human, just like you. They will never have all the answers. When you see a chance to step up and lead them, take it.
Lean into courage. It's normal to be a little fearful when we want to speak up, move forward, present an idea, or take action on something. But if we weren’t fearful or nervous, it would mean that we didn’t care. Especially when we lead “up,” we have to ask ourselves what it means to be a leader, and to me, it means acting with courage. I believe that courage can’t exist without fear. Fear is the opportunity for courage to exist.
See failure as learning. Being fully empowered also means having complete ownership of our mistakes and missteps. But it’s important to remember that failure is learning. When we make mistakes, instead of thinking, “I am a failure,” reframe to, “I am learning.” As long as we take what we learn from our mistakes and try again with those lessons in mind, it’s not failure. On the leadership side, we have to accept that people will mess up. It’s not a possibility; it’s an inevitability. And when that happens, we have to remind ourselves that we can’t step in and save them. If we protect everyone from everything, they won’t grow. Allowing people to make mistakes and learn from them is how they will get better and better.
Make empowerment possible. If you’re a leader of a team and you’re concerned by the idea of people making decisions without you, I want to challenge you to start to empower your team more often. Giving them more ownership over tasks and new ideas is a great way to start. But before you encourage someone to run with their idea, make sure you are clear about your expectations, deadlines, vision for success, and when you want them to bring you in. When you do that, you will create an environment where you help your team feel trusted and a sense of real ownership.
The last thing I want to leave you with is a reminder that you are valuable as a human and a leader. When you speak up, it matters. Your perspective is valuable, even if you’ve only been a leader or on a team for a short time.
I hope this reminds you that you are the leader our world needs! Remember Kelly’s example and say it with a megaphone: “Put me in, coach!”
Big hugs,
