Control vs. Empowerment | Leadership Tensions | Part 7 of 10

Today we’re diving into part 7 of our Leadership Tensions series focused on control vs. empowerment. Listen in as Chip Parker discusses the importance of empowering your team and delegating, instead of controlling every situation. Let’s jump in!

Thanks for listening to the Impact Leadership podcast! We are so glad that you're here. If you're looking to connect with Chip Parker, send him a message at chip@theorchardcc.org. New episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays. We'll catch you in the next episode!

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome in to the Impact Leadership Podcast. My name is Chip Parker, and I'm the lead pastor at the Orchard Community Church, a multi-site church in North Central Florida working to impact lostness and impact the next generation. This podcast is all about helping you as a church leader grow your leadership to grow your impact. Let's hop into this week's conversation. All right. Well, we are jumping right back into our conversation that we have been having all about tensions that we face in leadership. If you are a leader, then 100% you have had to deal with tensions. We all do. There's tensions everywhere. And as leaders, we have to kind of walk that line a lot of the time. But here's the thing some of those apparent tensions really aren't tensions at all. They're decisions that we need to make. And when we don't make that decision, when we continue to ride the fence, we mess up things in our organization. And so we've kind of been walking through this series, looking at okay, what are some tensions we need to hold? And what are decisions we need to make that may come disguised as those tensions? Well, today that we're going to look at is the tension of control versus empowerment. And I'll just go ahead and say this. We'll get it out there. It may be surprising for you to hear me say it, but I actually think this is a tension to hold, not a decision to make. And again, if you know me well, that may seem kind of shocking because I love leaning into empowerment. I love setting up people to go out and lead on their own. I love pushing people to leadership and projects before they even feel like they're ready for them. However, I don't think that we can ever get to the place where we choose empowerment over control. Here's what I would say leadership matures from control toward empowerment, but it never actually abandons either one. Leadership grows, it matures. As we develop as leaders, we move from control toward empowerment, but we can never give up what I'm talking about here as control. And when I say control, I don't mean that you are micromanaging every single thing in your organization. Obviously, that is not healthy. But what I am talking about is controlling not just what is done, but the way things are done in your organization. That comes primarily through hands-on modeling. As the leader in your organization, you have to set the example again, not just for what needs to be done, but for how it needs to be done. And that's an important thing that we have to understand. We have to go first. We have to be the leaders. We have to model this. And then after we model it and pass it on to others to do, we have to create tight feedback loops to hear from them about what their struggles are, what their concerns are. And then for them to hear from us what we need to change, what we need to tweak, what we need to get better. And if this sounds like confrontational, a little bit of conflict in this feedback, it may be, but it is that conflict that creates a healthy culture. And here's the thing this idea of control, of modeling not just what, but how, being able to provide feedback again, not just for what, but how, that type of control creates clarity in an organization. It enables us to be crystal clear about who we are, what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. But we can't always have full control. And so that's why that control has to mature into empowerment. As we begin to model what we do and how we do it, as we have these tight feedback loops, we create trust, trust in the people that we're developing, trust in the people we're training. We create trust in ourselves because they see that we are here not just to put them on an island, but to help them through the process. And then what we have is trust bridging the gap between control and empowerment. And so when that control brings clarity, that clarity creates trust, then we are able to empower other leaders and that creates growth. You will not grow as an organization if you do not empower others to lead on their own. If you don't empower others to take on big projects, to take big risks, to bring up their own ideas, your organization is gonna stagnate and you are gonna become a lid. But let me just say this, and I think this is a tangent worth taking in this conversation. When we empower others, listen, there is a difference between delegating and dumping. Good leaders know how to delegate. Good leaders know how to offload assignments to others who can either A do them better or B, give more attention to them. But good leaders never dump these projects on others, never dump these responsibilities on others. It's not just because I don't want to do it, I don't have time for it. Here, you handle it. That's not good leadership. Delegating is when we don't just assign tasks, we delegate best when we assign responsibilities. Dumping on someone is just giving them a to-do list of things we don't want to be bothered with, but delegating effectively means that we are delegating outcomes, we are delegating responsibility, we are not simply handing off a to-do list. And again, I think it's so important for us to understand when we do that effectively and we empower others, that creates growth. But I don't want you to miss this one thing. We've said it. Control creates clarity, empowerment creates growth, and so you don't need to miss that connection. Empowerment requires clarity. If you are not clear as a leader on what you do, on how you do it and why you do it, you will never be able to effectively empower others to lead in your place. We must be clear if we want to empower others. So again, let me just offer a warning. When it comes to control versus empowerment, if you try to resolve that tension rather than hold it, if you try to land on either control or empowerment, you're either going to create absolute chaos in your organization or you're going to bottleneck your organization. You are either going to limit growth or you are going to kill growth. But if you try to land in one area or the other, it's just not going to work. This is a tension that we have to hold. But because I know a lot of leaders tend toward control over empowerment, let me leave you with this for a question to think about today. What is it that you are busy holding on to that someone else can own? What is it in your role as a leader that you really could pass on to somebody else? Not dumping on them a to-do list, but delegating them a responsibility and outcome of what you want to see happen. And again, don't mishear me. I'm not saying that you can't have any say-so in it. You need to have a little bit of control as you have modeled this before, as you provide tight feedback loops. There needs to be trust that flows both ways. But leader, what is it that you're holding on to that you can pass on to somebody else that they can own and then run with? Hey, listen to me. If everything depends on you, you're not leading. So when it comes to control or empowerment, let's make sure that we are growing and maturing from control toward empowerment, but let's make sure that we hold on to both. One last thing before we end this conversation is just let me say if you are a leader, specifically in the local church context or even outside of it, I would love to be able to connect with you if I can help. If you would like, I'm gonna have my email in the show notes. Reach out to me. We can set up a time to connect because here's what I know leadership is bigger than any one of us. If we're truly going to have an impact in our communities, we need to lean on each other and we need to learn from each other. So I would be more than happy to do what I can to connect with you and help you lead right where you are. So reach out, let us know how we can connect. But until then, we'll see you right back here next week on the Impact Leadership Podcast.