Are you feeding problems or challenging for change?

When we think we lead, we, often, actually feed.

Leaders feel like the “answer-man” sometimes. When underlings have a problem, they approach their leader/boss and get the answer. Right?

Wrong.

That’s a recipe for the creation of dependent whiners, not free-thinking innovators.

One of our required readings for the students of Vital Leadership is a book called The Power of T.E.D. by David Emerald. This book is convicting to us know-it-all helpers. I was introduced to the book through the Notre Dame University Executive Leadership series of courses, and, although completion of the certificate courses is still 2 months away, I am not sure if they’ll introduce another, greater resource than this.

T.E.D stands for “The Empowerment Dynamic,” and it encourages empowerment from all angles. It encourages creativity to find answers. It encourages a limited listening ear – no wallowing in self-pity allowed here. Difficulties will strike us all in life. When we encounter difficulty, we often flounder. And for a bit, that’s okay. It’s a time of processing and, maybe grieving the loss of something or someone special or an opportunity. But then, it’s time for a solution, not further whining, complaining, looking for partnership in the pain, etc. etc.

Our first inclination is to join forces in processing – to seek the ear of a friend or advisor or leader.

Step 1: phone a friend.

Step 2: bring them under your cloud with details, sometimes more than necessary

Step 3: ask for an answer and follow it fully or decline any help and continue raining on parades

Where’s the leadership step? T.E.D. would explain that the leader steps up within Step 2: Leaders empower. They help the victim define their desire outcome, seek their own answers and be creative in their thought processes. Leaders DO NOT solve the problem. Victims think they want an answer and maybe even ask for answers, but answers only create powerless, insecure, eternal victims.

Leaders, rather, should create passionate problem solvers and show their faith in the victim’s own abilities by changing the victim’s perspective from rainy to cloudy to sunny. As possibilities come into view, the leader encourages and hope emerges.

The fruit of this book is evident here. The Power of T.E.D. influenced this Vital Leadership student, a strong leader in his church ministry, to realize that answers FEEL powerful, but that means the victim feels POWERLESS.

As a leader, it is important for me to carry a strong vision for where to take my people. From this vision, I can then construct offensive weapons to take me to where I desire to be. The Bible provides a great analogy for this while talking about the armor of God. In the armor, we are given the shield of faith to protect ourselves from the attacks of the enemy, but we are also given the sword of the Spirit – God’s Word. The armor of God would be incomplete without the offensive weapon of God’s Holy Word. It is by His word that we charge the gates of Hell and take back ground from the enemy.

In much the same way, as leaders we are not called to sit back and avoid attacks or problems. Rather, we must charge forward towards our goals, understanding that hardships will arise, and using those issues to our advantage. As this book describes, we often grow the most when problems arise and we face them in a positive light. I have experienced this in my own life. Some of the hardest times in my life are also the most fruitful. So, we can never be effective leaders if we allow ourselves to be crippled by bumps along the road. We must be creators.

Lastly, in order to be a leader, I must learn to change from a rescuer to a coach and from a persecutor to a challenger. John Maxwell said it best, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I think that this principle is crucial to our understanding of what it means to be a leader.

There are many times when I see imperfections in the lives of those that I lead, and my desire is to try to fix and perfect them. I often feel like I have the correct answers, and I want to feed those answers to those that I lead. As we saw with the rescuers in this book though, this viewpoint is incomplete and generally unhelpful. Spoon-feeding the answers to people’s problems is not sustainable, nor is it helpful.

In reality, our ‘solutions’ are actually making people dependent upon us. Rather than operating from this standpoint, we must teach people to think for themselves by asking probing questions. We cannot just ‘give people fish’; we must ‘teach them how to fish’. This is what a coach does. He cares deeply about those that he coaches, and does not need to be affirmed by fixing people.

If we can learn to operate as constructive challengers rather than deconstructive challengers, we will not only gain the respect of those that follow us, but we will also help to leave lasting change.