How do you balance giving your team autonomy while ensuring decisions align with the overall vision?

Empowering your team isn't a leap of faith, it's a strategic investment. By fostering trust, you create a space where autonomy thrives. Regular, open communication builds that trust. Share the company vision, goals, and key metrics. This transparency equips your team to make decisions that align with the bigger picture, while feeling ownership and accountability for the outcome. Trusting their expertise unleashes innovation and fuels results.

In my experience, building trust through autonomy is pivotal, yet it requires more than just delegating tasks. It involves translating the vision into tangible terms that resonate with each team member's role, aligning with the company’s collective values and purpose. By clearly articulating how each person's contributions support the company’s mission, we can more confidently empower them with autonomy to make decisions that contribute towards shared goals and vision.

Building trust is indeed the bedrock for cultivating an environment where your team can thrive with autonomy, We've seen that high-trust organizations foster remarkable benefits like 74% less stress, 106% more energy, 50% higher productivity and 40% less burnout. By daring to be authentic and creating space for vulnerability, you inspire your team to show up wholly as well.

As a CEO for more than 20 consecutive successful years leading several corporations, allow me to speak to emerging leaders who seek to become a CEO. Trust is the fruition of the relationship a CEO has with their leaders as part of an executive team and with employees. What do you bring to create trust? Self-awareness, competencies, along with comportment and propriety of one's constitution. Trust is earned, it needs to be actively maintained. While the CEO can facilitate and nurture the culture of the enterprise in elevating key enterprise values, senior leaders also play a role in advancing the culture. The CEO and leaders who internalise duty of loyalty advance safety, fairness and freedom to innovate throughout the enterprise.

Showing vulnerability helps build trust. Patrick Lencioni talks about that in his book 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. When leaders admit mistakes or apologize, it helps build trust within the team. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable.

Higher purpose organizations from Legos to Salesforce are guided by a future focused vision that is grounded in their shared set of values. Businesses and even individuals can gain an enduring advantage of understanding of how aligning vision and values can produce higher quality decisions and more satisfying outcomes. Workers who have clear paths on how these elements are encoded in how they are evaluated, promoted, learn and grow can lead to greater engagement and long term satisfaction.

--Empower Through Clear Frameworks Provide your team with clear boundaries within which they can make decisions. Define the scope of their autonomy, ensuring alignment with the company’s vision. Encourage self-assessment by having them ask if their decisions align with company goals and contribute to team objectives. --Foster a Culture of Feedback and Collaboration Create a continuous feedback culture where feedback is constructive and aligns with the company's vision. Promote cross-functional collaboration to ensure diverse perspectives and holistic decisions, reinforcing alignment with overarching goals.

Imagine your team rowing a boat – autonomy lets them choose their strokes, but vision alignment ensures everyone paddles towards the same destination. The key is cascading the company vision into clear, actionable goals for each team. This shared understanding empowers them to make autonomous decisions that propel the team, and ultimately, the entire company, forward. Trust blossoms as their contributions directly connect to the bigger picture.

Autonomy requires the leader to know to whom autonomy is being given. You must know your team's individual strengths and challenges. Also, do they have the capacity to work autonomously, or do they need collaborative interactive and regular check-ins and due dates? Always involve your team in developing the program, its needs, and the vision. Ensure that your team has the buy-in for all elements; otherwise, working autonomously will be counterproductive as the team members will not believe they are doing this for the team/program; they will view it as a favor without a sense of urgency. The leader also must have a checks and balances system where part of the role is to enter data into a shared system for tracking and accountability.

Decision frameworks provide guardrails, not handcuffs. These frameworks, co-created with your team, outline key principles and decision-making criteria aligned with the company vision. This empowers them to navigate complex situations with autonomy, while ensuring their choices stay on course. Imagine a roadmap – it guides the journey without dictating every turn, fostering ownership and accelerating progress.

In my experience vision of a company or a leader is incomplete without a robust decision framework. A robust decision framework empower other leaders in the organization make decisions with confidence. As a leader if you/your organization have set a vision with a robust decision making framework then whenever you become bottleneck for making a decision, consider it a defect in your decision framework and work toward improving the framework to eliminate those defects in future.

There are numerous decision frameworks that teams can use to align with a company's values and vision, providing guidance without unnecessary complexity. The key is to ensure roles and responsibilities are clearly defined within these frameworks. This clarity ensures that each team member understands their part in the decision-making process, promoting accountability and transparency. When everyone knows their specific roles and how they contribute to the overall strategy, it enhances decision-making efficiency and effectiveness, fostering a cohesive and focused organizational environment.

Autonomous teams often struggle with knowing when to seek input from leaders. They can be criticized for reaching out too often (developing a reputation for indecision) or too infrequently, leaving leaders without the ability to understand or influence key decisions. It's crucial to discuss and agree on the "rules of the road." When should the leader be simply informed of a decision, and when should they be actively involved in making the decision itself? How often do they want updates, and in what format? How should the team handle unexpected challenges and opportunities? Clear communication ensures everyone has the same expectations and can work together effectively.

Show others only your game face and you'll be surrounded by people questioning their own value... Bring people on the journey with you, and you'll be surrounded by a league of supporters as brave and authentic as you

One thing managers may overlook when delegating is sharing where their team member's authority starts and stops. Empowering them includes being clear about what can they do, spend, or agree to without checking in with you. At the same time, be clear about the areas where the team member can not handle something on their own. A few examples that may be outside of their authority are negotiating outside of the project's budget or varying from the organization's official position on an issue. Share how you want them to handle these types of situations (e.g., check in with you first for guidance).

Frequent feedback loops are key. Professors and practitioners do not always agree on what make successful projects successful. But there is one thing they absolutely agree on... drum roll please... It is absolutely crucial that the sponsor/leader is close to the process. The closer the sponsor, the higher chance of success. So make sure to set aside at least 2 hours every 2 weeks - to come by the team and understand the progress being made. This is your chance to keep autonomy and vision in sync.

Leadership in a prior company I was involved would say, "We'll give 'em enough rope to hang themselves." I like the execution of autonomy, but I never could get on board with the motivation as the message was, " You better not fail." Getting employees to meet the vision is providing clear communication of the company's vision and goals. Ensure employees have the training to do the job that is expected of them. Most importantly, a culture supporting failure as a path to success. I have found that most employees know what it takes to succeed when given the tools and opportunity to do so.

As a leader, I believe you need to be a mentor. A mentor who set time aside that the team member is in (pretty much) total control over. And that time is often called a 1:1. It is your chance to help, when the team member needs help, questions to unluck an issue or guidance. And as you serve the team member, then you also get a chance to align with them if they are on their way off course. Remind them of the greater vision, and the corner flags that they would have to stay within. Gently guide them to find their way back on course. If these talks are frequent, then it will be easy. If you meet every 3 months, then you risk that the team member has gone off course for a long time, and wasted valuable time.

As a CEO leading several corporations over many years, I will never forget the impact on my career in meeting and training with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who helped to rebuild Japan after WWII, and led the global quality improvement movement. He had traveled the world many times over and attained profound wisdom. Dr. Deming believed all employees need the constancy of learning. Upon reflection there are so many incredible leaders who were my mentors and now paying it forward for me is to mentor others in what it takes to be a highly successful CEO. To the emerging leader who seeks to be a CEO, pursue education, there is no substitute, or short cuts. To lead an enterprise can often be soul crushing, and the role of a mentor is vital.

As a CEO for more than 20 consecutive successful years leading several corporations, among the very important roles of a CEO, is to coach, mentor and advance applied learning with your leaders. From this view an MBA, or similar advanced degrees can provide the professional with the basics of what it takes to be successful in an enterprise. To pursue becoming a CEO requires executive leadership development, strategic leadership development, and to have a mentor. To be a successful CEO over time, requires a commitment to never stop learning. To do so is to grow as a CEO. Your growth also benefits your leaders, employees and the enterprise. The fun part is to mentor leaders and see their growth that is fulfilling for them over time.

So I agree with all the above and would like to conclude that trust plays an important role. Keeping the team accountable. Establishing clear objectives, expectations and guidelines. Ongoing communication helps strike the right balance. Need to delegate wisely. Promote co-operation and diversity.

To accomplish this goal, clear communication and trust is required, whether at the CEO or department leader level. Alignment: Ensure team efforts and decisions align with company objectives and vision. Support and Resources: Provide necessary resources and support. Trust and Accountability: Foster a culture of trust and accountability. Encouragement of Autonomy: Encourage teams to exercise autonomy confidently. Empowerment: Equip team members to take ownership and responsibility. Communication: Ensure communication is a two-way street, with focus and message varying by role. Vision and Strategy: The CEO and board set the vision, but each department executes it, requiring different levels of understanding.