It started over a good meal, and a discussion about different leadership paradigms. We all agreed that most leaders default to a fixing and controlling style of leadership when under pressure. They use this methodology with systems, and any and all problems, including people. However, we also agreed that certain leaders approach the same situations with a trusting, listening, and allowing/supporting style of leadership.
“I think the latter generates more empowered people,” said the person across the table from me.
I agreed with his perspective. We paused for a moment to let this sink in, and then I asked him an important question: “What does it feel like to be empowered?”
When I asked this question, everyone at the table stopped talking and stopped eating. It was one of those questions where a superficial, management-by-best-seller answer did not need to be shared. And for a moment, it also didn’t feel like the time or place to speak. Instead, it was a collective moment of reflection before a deep level of sharing and understanding was created.
Many years ago, when I was working with a group of first time leaders, I got asked one of these unique kinds of questions. One of the participants said, “How do you do authenticity?” I had to stop for a moment, because over the course of my entire career I had never been asked this question. I responded, “One does not do authenticity. One choses to be authentic. It is not a doing action. It is a being action.”
As I pondered the question about empowerment, I realized that it was the same as the authenticity question, and my subsequent answer to that question. One does not do empowerment. Instead, one feels empowered. It begins at the being level, not the doing level. It is an internal experience, before it ever is an external action and outcome.
So, what does it feel like to be empowered?
I believe it all comes down to the following four words: clarity, confidence, competence, and connection. The Four C’s, as I like to call them, are the root of feeling empowered. On the surface, this seems elementary, but, after a great deal of reflection, I believe the Four C’s offer a unique perspective on this question.
The first C is clarity. This word did not really enter the lexicon of leadership until Patrick Lencioni wrote the book, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, (Jossey-Bass, 2000). Previous to that time period, it was used occasionally in the literature and during some consultations, trainings, and coaching sessions. But after 2000, the term went viral and everyone referenced the concept.
During the subsequent years that followed, it reminded me of when Stephen Covey wrote and published the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Before 1989, no one ever said put first things first or begin with the end in mind. Afterwards, everyone in leadership referenced these phrases and his seven habits. Thirty-six years later, people are still referencing his work. That is the power of finding the right words and phrases for the right time period.
Lencioni focused his definition of clarity around creating organizational clarity. As he wrote, “A healthy organization minimizes the potential for confusion by clarifying: why the organization exists, which behavioral values are fundamental, what specific business it is in, who its competitors are, how it is unique, what it plans to achieve, [and] who is responsible for what.”
I think this an important definition. However, it is focused on the organizational level, and I believe empowerment is experienced first on the personal level. Of course, one does need to have some degree of organizational clarity, but it is not the complete source of feeling empowered. Understanding strategy and priorities is part of the whole, but it does not generate the feeling of empowerment.
I think the feeling of empowerment happens when we have personal clarity before we have organizational clarity. Now, this is not a chicken vs egg question, namely which comes first? Instead, I think personal clarity happens when we commit to life long learning and routine, in-depth reflection. For it is the combination of the two which generates an on-going evolution of personal clarity rather than a one and done definition or experience.
Nevertheless, as we explore the connection between personal clarity and the feeling of empowerment, I am reminded of some thing that the late Thai Buddhist monk, Ajajn Chah once said: “It’s like we’re riding a horse and asking, ‘Where’s the horse?’ ” I don’t think we believe that the continual evolution of personal clarity is enough. I also don’t think many people want to do this level of internal work. Instead, many people expect someone else to tell them what they need to be clear about in life and work. They defer to others what is most important in their life. In essence, they want someone to hand them a horse, and then to give them permission to ride it, rather than do the work themselves to find a horse, create a relationship with the horse, and then learn how to ride it.
This leads me to the second C which is confidence. Over decades of doing this work, I have learned that empowered people have confidence. In particular, they have confidence in their ability to do things, and in their knowledge about how to solve problems. They also have confidence in their team and their company. They believe they can make the right decisions, and they believe they are role modeling what is most important.
Underneath this level of confidence, I have learned and observed that empowered people can make choices about how to achieve predetermined outcomes and goals. They also believe they are engaged in meaningful work. But for me, the root of this ability and this belief is that people, who feel they are empowered, also feel they have agency.
Having agency is defined as the ability to make decisions and to take actions in order to achieve one’s goals. Agency also is the sense of control that you feel in your life, the capacity to choose and to influence your own thoughts and behaviors, and the faith in your ability to handle whatever comes up in life. In very simple terms, having agency means having a choice about how to use your personal power.
When I think of the people I have met who have had agency, what intrigues me the most is that they are clear about who they are and what they believe, i.e. a deep sense personal clarity and understanding. At the exact same time, they are clear about their social connections and social networks which support them to take action. Their personal clarity, in combination with their social network and connections, gives them the confidence to engage with the challenges and problems before them.
Thus, they are not empowered by an outside positional leader, but instead they feel empowered by an inner depth of understanding and support. And those leaders who choose a paradigm of fixing and controlling things do not create people who feel empowered. Instead, it is the leader, who trusts, listens and supports people, that will create the feeling of empowerment. This happens in part because the leader, who chooses this paradigm, understands that they do not empower people, per se, but instead supports them to discover and claim their own agency. The feeling begins on the inside and then is validated and supported on the outside.
The third C is competence. On the surface, this again seems elementary. Of course, empowered people are competent. They create plans and execute them. They generate positive outcomes and meet expectations. They even work well with others in a team setting. But the outer results reflect something on the inside that many leaders miss, namely that these individuals have an internal drive to continually get better at what they are doing. Rather than defining competence by a static definition of knowledge, skills, and abilities, people, who feel empowered, are always wanting to get better. They are focused on mastering the work they are doing rather than simply completing the work they are doing.
Of course, they want to do a good job and, if needed and possible, to go above and beyond what is truly required. But the source of this choice lies in a fundamental commitment to life-long learning more than life-long doing. They want to be better in order that they can do better. Their inner clarity and confidence, in part, reflects their inner commitment to continually becoming more competent rather than just being competent enough to get the work done.
The fourth C is connection. When I reflect on all of the empowered people I have met in various different companies and industries, I am reminded of a phrase from Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap. . . and Others Don’t (HarperBusiness, 2001): “First Who. . . Then What”. As he explains, “The key point … is not just the idea of getting the right people on the team. The key point is that "who" questions come before "what" decisions - before vision, before strategy, before organization structure, before tactics. First who, then what - as a rigorous discipline, consistently applied.” For Collins, the people, who are a part of your team and are part of your network, are a significant reason for your success. I would add that I think it makes a big difference in whether or not you feel empowered, too.
With this in mind, I turn to the work of Herminia Ibarra and her book, Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015). First, she notes that people have a tendency to prefer interacting with people who are similar to themselves. She calls this “the narcissistic principle of relationship formation.” I have noticed this time and time again over the course of many decades.
Yet, Ibarra writes that leaders use networks as an essential leadership tool. They help them in the following ways: “sensing trends and seeing opportunities, building ties to opinion leaders and talent in diverse areas, working collaboratively across boundaries to create more value, avoiding groupthink, generating breakthrough ideas, [and] obtaining career opportunities.” All of these diverse connections generates capacity on multiple levels.
In particular, Ibarra encourages us to have three kinds of networks: operational, personal, and strategic networks. As she writes, “The first helps you manage current internal responsibilities, the second boosts personal development, and the third focuses on new business directions and the stakeholders you must get on board to pursue these directions.” She further explains that “your strategic network is made up of relationships that help you to envision the future, sell your ideas, and get the information and resources you need to exploit these ideas…. A good strategic network gives you connective advantage: the ability to marshal information, support, or other resources from one of your networks to obtain results in another.” Finally, she shares, “You need operational, personal, and strategic networks to get things done, to develop personally and professionally, and to step up to leadership. Although most good managers have good operational networks, their personal networks are disconnected from their leadership work, and their strategic networks are nonexistent or underutilized.”
When I meet leaders, who feel empowered, I always notice that the “who” factor within their various networks are not random. They are made up of individuals the leader has sought out, built a relationship with, and worked hard to maintain this relationship over time. There is a recognition that these in-depth connections generate perspective, insights, and new ways of thinking. From my perspective, this depth of connectivity strengthens their ability to be empowered and to feel empowered.
Finally, when it comes to the importance of connections, I also am reminded of John Paul Lederach and his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art And Soul Of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005). Lederach offers a powerful phrase that often explains something unique about people who feel empowered, namely they “… put ‘who’ at the center of ‘how’.” As he explains, “When people in everyday settings where I was working had a conflict, their first thought was not ‘what is the solution?’ It was ‘who do I know who knows the person with whom I have the problem who can help create a way out?’ The question ‘who?’ came first. The question ‘what?’ followed. To put it another way, solutions emerged from relational resources, connections, and obligations.” I think this is the final key to empowerment. When an individual has the “relational resources, connections, and obligations,” they generate an inner clarity, confidence and competence to move through challenging situations and problems. In short, they feel empowered.
When clarity, confidence, competence, and connection converge within an individual, they experience something very unique, namely a state of coherence, i.e. a unified whole where all the parts fit together. The opposite of coherence is fragmentation and a loss of continuity. With coherence, empowerment is a discovered and unified experience. While the feeling of coherence and empowerment is unique to each individual, we as leaders must learn to lead in such a way as to trust and support this inner alignment. For when we do this, we capitalize on the best an individual has to offer, namely their commitment to be the best they can be no matter what challenges are before them.
© Geery Howe 2025
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