Introduction

Speaker 2
And it also shows curiosity, right? And you're empowering others because you're asking their opinions. So I think as a journalist, I've always found that I'm most successful in conversations when I'm steering them, but only by asking other people questions.
Speaker 1
Absolutely. In the book, I write about this concept, what I call the spotlight principle. And when we think about, for example, who has more power and you put a spotlight down, right? Is it the person in the spotlight or the person in the darkness who has the most power? And of course, the person in the darkness doesn't really have any power, right? So everybody says, oh, it's the person in the spotlight. That's actually not. The person who has the most power in a room is the person controlling the spotlight.
Speaker 2
So what if you are managing someone who you think has a lot of potential, but is really struggling to develop these personal power skills? How can you help as a boss? Well,
Speaker 1
you could, for example, give them more autonomy. But a few things. One is it behooves leaders to share goals with their subordinates, their employees, not to micromanage and necessarily give all the concrete details. But in doing that, without giving the specifics, it gives the employees agency to come up with the right solutions, the best solutions for achieving that goal. Number two, hold your employees accountable. I think a lot of times people are hesitant to hold others accountable because they worry that it'll negatively impact the relationship. But research suggests that, of course, naturally because we ourselves have a sense of control over the environment, that we take responsibility and we project this outward expecting others to take responsibility. And so when you hold others accountable, of course, there are effective ways and ineffective ways to do this. But when you hold others accountable, it helps them break the illusion of their own powerlessness. And the third thing I'll leave you with on this is sometimes you give an employee a task, for example, but the employee runs into barriers with other employees. Nobody listens to that employee. And I give an example of this in the book. What you can do as a manager to empower your employee is not... What happens sometimes is because your employee is not being taken seriously, everybody else goes to you for the answers. Even though they should be going to employee, they go to you for the answers, right? And if you were to give them the answers, you're actually disempowering your employee because you're reconfirming a different sort of hierarchy. So an empowered manager who empowers others would say, hey, you need to go to this person who's working for me. I've put this person in charge of that. Talk to them. Well,
Speaker 2
terrific, Chris. Thank you so much for all this advice about how to show up more powerfully at work and in life and to help others do so. My
Speaker 1
pleasure.
Speaker 2
That's Chris Lipp. He's a professor and the director of management communication at Tulane University's Freeman School of Business. He's also the author of three books on persuasion, including his most recent, The Science of Personal Power. And we have over a thousand episodes and more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts or search HBR onCast. We'll be back with our next episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.

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