Empowerment: The Key to Reaching the Next Level.

If you want your team to get to the next level, they must first be empowered to think and act as if they are already there. I learned this lesson recently from one of my Leading Petty Officers, Petty Officer Carnegie. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Navy's rank structure, a Leading Petty Officer, or LPO for short, is like a shop supervisor. He supervises a division made up of several enlisted sailors who specialize in a certain job, such as weapons mechanics, sonar technicians, etc. He usually has around 10 to 15 years of experience in the Navy and reports directly to a Chief Petty Officer who is the senior enlisted leader in the division, usually with 15 to 20 years of Naval experience. The Chief then reports to a Division Officer who is a first-tour officer with anywhere from 1 day to 5 years in the Navy. Division Officers like myself are faced with an interesting problem. Although the Division Officer is a college graduate and the recipient of in depth officer training, he knows very little about his job when he starts. Officers are generalists by nature so that one day they can be Captains of their own ship. Instead of being experts on one aspect of the ship, like enlisted men are, officers must learn something about every facet of the ship. Therefore officers must rely on their Chiefs and LPO's to uphold the standards of the division and to be the technical experts while the officer learns the ropes of his new job.

I recently took charge of a department of three divisions on board my ship, and I am very fortunate that one of them has been recognized as the best on the waterfront. Inspectors have commented that these men are the best they've seen in years, and one of my sailors received the highest grade on a weapons evolution that has ever been recorded. I wish I could take credit for these amazing achievements, but I have had nothing to do with them. They all happened before I took over.

I wondered what it was that made these men special. I've been in charge of other divisions in the past that have not even come close to this kind of success. What were we missing? I found the answer the other day when I gave an order to my LPO. After asking him to do something for me, he responded, "Sir, talk to Petty Officer Murray about that." At first I was a bit taken aback. I am not big on using my rank and position to get things done, but I do expect some military courtesy. Most Petty Officers would have responded with, "I'll get right on that sir," or "No problem." Seeing that I was a bit surprised by his response, he said "Sir, I'm not trying to get out of doing my job, I'm trying to train Petty Officer Murray to be an LPO." In other words, he was training his replacement. Right then it hit me. The reason for all of the success of the division was that their leader was empowering them to take charge. If he wanted his men to perform at a higher level, he had to give them the opportunity to do so. He had to train them and then give over a great deal of his responsibility to them, and trust that they would succeed.

There is a saying in the Navy that goes "authority can be delegated, but accountability can never be delegated." This concept scares a lot of managers, both inside the military and out. It scares me sometimes as well. My LPO is responsible to me for everything that happens in his division, just like I am responsible to my boss for everything that happens in my department. If his men don't do their jobs correctly, I will hold him accountable. But he never lets a fear of failure stop him from giving his men an opportunity to shine. He empowers them to do jobs that other leaders would reserve for much more senior sailors or even ask their officers to do for them. After I began to understand his methods, it became much easier to see how he was able to mold his young group of guys into one of the most successful Torpedo Divisions in the Navy.


A recent article in the Harvard Business Review puts the concept like this, "Let innovators work with live ammunition." (Cohn, Katzenbach, and Vlak, Finding and Grooming Breakthrough Innovators, Dec 08) This is literally what Petty Officer Carnegie does as the Torpedo Division Leading Petty Officer. He allows his men increasing responsibility, literally with real live ammunition and explosives, to build their confidence. The men respond with increased motivation to succeed and the results are indisputable.

I've seen this elsewhere in the Navy as well. Captain John C. Nygaard, Commanding Officer of the USS Vicksburg, a Guided Missile Cruiser, leads his crew with the simple motto, "Confidence through proficiency." I personally observed this Captain allow his junior officers to lead their sailors through complex ship-handling operations unsupervised. He intentionally did not go to the bridge of the ship, as almost every other Captain would, to supervise his officers because he believed that their confidence would increase exponentially if they were permitted to do it themselves. He knew the resulting increased level of confidence of his officers would lead to a much higher level of proficiency, which would pay huge dividends later. In the Navy, increasing the level of proficiency of your crew, is tantamount to increasing the market share of your ship. This kind of leadership, however, takes an incredible amount of courage and wisdom. If one of his officers were to make a mistake and collide with another ship during any of these evolutions, the Captain would be fired. It seems however, that fortune favors the brave. His ship has been recognized consistently as being one of the best.


So how can you start to empower your team to achieve greater things? First, start by identifying your top performers and those with the most potential. From this group, identify the one or two that you think could take your place given the proper training and experience. Once you have identified the one or two people that could take your place, begin to allow them to perform some of the duties that you would normally perform yourself. For example, a marketing manager might allow one of his junior associates to make the sales pitch to an important client, or a Senior Pastor might allow one of his Junior Pastors to take the pulpit from time to time or even lead his own service. The key to achieving success here is to provide your team with the proper mentorship and support before you give them the increased responsibility. When you feel that they are ready, let them go for it and trust them with the results. You'll be amazed at the things that will happen.


Unfortunately however, the amazing things that I'm describing may not happen over night. Captain Eric Merrill was my first Commanding Officer. I only served under him for three months, but he left a lasting impression on me. When he transferred, he was recognized as the number one Captain in the submarine squadron (the best out of 10), and he had two Battle Efficiency Awards two his credit. The "Battle E" as it is know is given to the best ship in the squadron each year. It is the equivalent of being recognized in Fortune or Forbes for business excellence. The day before he left, he called all of his officers into the wardroom and read us a letter he had received from his boss shortly after taking command. In the letter, his boss explained how concerned he was about the level of performance of the ship. He felt that Captain Merrill and the WYOMING were not up to standards and made it painfully clear. The Captain then said something that I'll never forget. He said that he believed so much in his style of leadership that he would not deviate from it regardless of what his boss said. Captain Merrill believed that as Captain, he should not run the ship. He believed that he should as he put it, "be sitting in his stateroom playing solitaire waiting for his Department Heads (principle advisers) to come in and tell him how they were going to run the ship." And, after a little bit of training and coaching, they ran the ship- all the way to being recognized as the number one ship twice. Captain Merrill then said something even more impressive. He said, "I'm not telling you this because I think I did anything special, I'm telling you this because you all did this." Wow! That is leadership. The Captain knew that in order to succeed, he couldn't do it alone. He needed his team not only to perform, but to perform at a higher level. They could only do this if they were empowered to do so by a boss who trusted in them and believed that they could do it. He believed so much that they could achieve greatness that he refused to change his methods even after being warned by his boss.


The final example I'll use to demonstrate this kind of leadership is Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate authority on empowerment. The New Testament is filled with accounts of how Jesus empowered his disciples and others to do what they could not do by themselves. Luke 10 provides an excellent account of Jesus' empowering nature. Jesus appointed 70 believers to go into the cities and preach the good news saying to them "I give you all authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you." (Luke 10:19) Why did Jesus empower these followers to go out in his name? Because God uses people to advance his kingdom. He needed a team to fulfill his mighty plan. Jesus said to his disciples "the harvest is truly great but the laborers are few." (Luke 10:2) He therefore handed over his authority to them to change the world. We face the same leadership challenges in our jobs, churches, and non-profits. There is an incredible harvest out there waiting for a team to go out and claim it. Lets learn from Jesus and all of the other examples we've seen of empowering leaders and empowered teams. There is no limit to what we can achieve when we empower our people.