Executive Education Insights: Jim Roach, executive director of TCU Neeley Executive Education, shares practical strategies to challenge leadership norms, delegate effectively, and drive team success.
January 07, 2025
By Jim Roach
TCU Neeley Executive Education, Executive Director
As we move into 2025, it’s a safe bet to say that leaders and organizations will continue to be challenged by an escalating pace of change and an unrelenting array of new challenges. One of the ways leaders can respond is by finding new ways to unleash autonomy in individuals and teams. Yet, it’s also something that most leaders still struggle with.
The language we use around creating more autonomy for employees provides some clues that our fundamental paradigms need to shift. Why are we considering granting autonomy for employees to do their jobs, when that’s why we hired them in the first place? Why do highly capable people need to be empowered to make decisions, allocate resources, or decide when, where and how to work?
Often, this can include rational considerations like readiness, experience and responsibility. Just as often, these concepts threaten our own paradigms for our roles and sources of influence and power as leaders. As leaders, we are already providing autonomy for our teams. Still, for most teams, a tremendous amount of additional potential value is being left on the table.
Here are three ways to create more autonomy for your team in 2025:
Challenge Your Own Beliefs
One of the quotes ascribed to Mark Twain famously goes, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” The first thing that we need to change as leaders is the hardest – our minds. Consider a few commonly held leadership beliefs.
- People need to be told what to do.
- Leaders make critical decisions.
- Trust is earned.
If you flip these around just a bit, you get a dramatically different way of looking at leadership that has important implications for finding ways to grant additional autonomy:
- Most people are very responsible, so let them create direction for themselves.
- Critical decisions are everyone’s responsibility.
- Trust should be my starting point.
Try putting one or more of these in play. You’ll surprise and delight some and you will definitely shock a few others. But experience over time tells us that most people will be energized and step up.
Give Yourself a “Special Project”
You’ve probably noticed that when you’re pulled off your daily duties to jump into a special project, your team steps up. Similarly, when you take a vacation, the work still gets done – often very well and in ways you hadn’t thought of. Sometimes, they don’t even really miss you.
These moments should provide strong clues about where you actually add extra value, and where you might either be redundant or simply getting in the way. An interesting question to ask yourself is, “Whose job am I doing now?” I think we would all be surprised at how often the answer is “someone else’s.”
So, assign yourself a “special project” each week. It might help you find some time to think about what’s coming around the corner for your team, your function or your profession.
Give Them the Real Tools They Need to Do Their Jobs
Having influence and control over decisions, budgets, approvals and resource allocation are among a leader’s most influential capabilities. But what opportunities are created if you can shift some of these responsibilities to your team? Accountability, agility, creativity and speed come to mind.
There are several things that need to happen in order to make this shift successful. A good place to start is with yourself. Sometimes it can be hard to let go of things, especially when you feel they are at the core of your role and central to your impact. Here again, readiness and mindset are essential, and the first shift needs to come from you.
Your team’s readiness and mindset are clearly also crucial. It’s likely that some team members are ready now and some aren’t. But sometimes, shifting things can accelerate readiness and shift mindsets remarkably fast. When your team members don’t need to ask for approval and then also realize that the buck stops at their desk, it can bring about an important change of perspective very quickly.
One simple starting point might be picking three things you can shift right away. What authority, accountability or functions do you now hold that you can shift to your team?
These simple ideas are designed to create additional space for your team to step into. If you believe that most people are responsible, hardworking and will do the right thing if given the opportunity, amazing things can happen. People will step up. They’ll try new approaches. They’ll invent new products and processes. And you’ll have more time to explore just what your job as a leader can truly be in a world that is continuously transforming.
