Empowerment

THE TENSION

Empowerment. It appears in most leadership frameworks as a positive aspiration - something you give to your team. What is less often examined is the degree to which a leader’s own relationship with power and capability determines whether their team can actually access it.

“You cannot empower others from a place of scarcity. Empowerment begins with your own relationship to what you are capable of.”

THE SCENARIO

Ryan Johansson has been Climate and Spatial Services Team Lead at the Bureau of Meteorology for seven months. He guides the spatial data infrastructure for climate modelling outputs, flood forecasting systems, and national weather observation networks - a role that sits at the intersection of technical complexity and national consequence.

Ryan is highly capable and knows it. He has a comprehensive grasp of the technical systems, strong relationships with the engineering teams, and a confident command of the domain. His team respects his expertise.

In the past month, Ryan has resolved five significant technical problems that arose in the team’s work. In each case, his solution was correct and efficient. In each case, the team member who brought the problem to him left having learned what Ryan’s answer was, rather than how to approach that class of problem themselves.

His team member Ingrid has been in the role for eighteen months. She is technically developing well. Ryan has noticed that she consistently brings problems to him at the point where she has done good diagnostic work but not yet committed to a direction. He gives her the direction. She implements it well.

Last week, Ingrid was asked to lead a client briefing on flood model outputs while Ryan was in a governance meeting. She prepared thoroughly, delivered clearly, and handled the questions well.

Afterwards, she mentioned to a colleague: “I should do more of those. I didn’t realise I could.”

Ryan had not realised she didn’t know.

WHAT’S DRIVING IT

Empowerment is living from the viewpoint of being able to fulfil your own intentions while enabling and inspiring others to fulfil theirs. It is how you relate to your own power, capabilities, and real or perceived limitations - and critically, it is how that relationship either expands or constrains the people around you.

Ryan’s capability is genuine. The problem is that he is expressing it in a way that consistently positions him as the answer - which makes everyone else the question. Ingrid’s diagnostic work before she brings problems to Ryan is exactly the thinking that should be reaching conclusion. When Ryan steps in at that moment, he is not helping her develop. He is completing her thinking for her, every time.

Empowerment requires a leader who is secure enough in their own capability to not need to demonstrate it at every opportunity. The most empowering move Ryan can make is to step back at the moment Ingrid is closest to the answer, and ask what she thinks.

A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH EMPOWERMENT

A healthy relationship with empowerment means you mostly experience being able to take powerful actions towards fulfilling your own intentions, purpose, and goals - while encouraging and inspiring others to fulfil theirs. Others experience you as someone who takes meaningful action and makes a significant difference, and who inspires them to follow because your actions also make a difference to them.

In practice, this looks like Ryan pausing when Ingrid brings a diagnostic problem and asking: ‘You’ve done the hard work here. What direction are you leaning?’ It looks like giving Ingrid more client briefings before she thinks she is ready for them. It looks like a team whose confidence in their own capability is growing, not just their confidence in Ryan’s.

REFLECTION PROMPTS

- In the last month, how many problems have you solved that a team member could have solved themselves with a little more time and a question from you instead of an answer?

- Who on your team has not yet discovered what they are capable of - because you have been the one doing the discovering on their behalf?

- What is the difference between demonstrating your capability and developing your team’s - and how much of your leadership energy goes to each?

- What would you need to let go of, or trust, in order to step back at the moment when stepping in is most tempting?

If you recognise yourself in Ryan - genuinely capable and inadvertently in the way of your team’s development - The Being Profile explores how empowerment operates in your leadership: your relationship to your own power, and how that relationship shapes the capability of the people around you. Get in touch at hello@mappingbeing.com.au

While the organisations referenced exist, the team lead, other people and the team name have been used for demonstration purposes only. Any resemblance to real-life people, teams, organisations or situations is purely coincidental.

Reference: Tashvir, A. (2021). BEING (p. 354). Engenesis Publications.

[Published: 21 October 2026]