If you are starting or evolving an organization you would like to make more people-positive, you may want to start with how you share power. The concept of power-sharing can be scary for management. It often means managers would need to give up some power to share it with someone else. That is the wrong way to frame it.

When you share power with your staff, you are saying you trust them to make important decisions. You cultivate a stronger sense of purpose, which leads to more engagement and job satisfaction. Sharing power lets you tap into the diversity in your organization which can lead to better outcomes. It can even produce outcomes you could never have planned for.

When you manage in a hierarchical organization, you are already in an explicit power structure, where your title and level in the company gives you power over people who report to you. It may not be something you explicitly take advantage of because leadership styles play a role in this too. 

If your particular leadership style leans into democratic or servant leadership, you are likely a natural power sharer. Both of those styles seek to give people a voice and provide more autonomy. They are supportive styles, unlike the directorial command-and-control style that you might be under. It should be clear that some styles are more apt to be power-sharing than others.

You can also be in a hierarchical organization that utilizes consensus to make decisions, and that’s another way to share power. In its simplest form, consensus grants everyone an equal say in decision-making. This form of sharing power would be classified as “power with” rather than power over.

Delegating Accountability

The fact is managers have been sharing power for ages. Delegating work to others is a form of power-sharing. It transfers responsibility to someone else. However, delegating work does not necessarily transfer accountability. Giving people true accountability is the key to sharing power with your staff.

For instance, you can assign a piece of work to one of your direct reports and give them a delivery date. When they hand that work in, as their manager, you can then hand it up the chain and take credit for it. This might happen if you are accountable for producing reports about your team’s performance, and you delegate the creation of the report to someone on your team. Managers might frame this as a development opportunity for the team member, but they might still take the credit as the accountable party who handed it in.

Taking credit for someone else’s work not only takes power away from that person, but it also disrespects and erodes trust with that person. Ultimately, it undermines any attempt to build a culture of collaboration and engagement. In short, don’t ever do that! Even if you delegate something that you hand up the chain, make sure you acknowledge those who contributed to it.

Granting Autonomy

There are ways to share power that distribute accountability and give credit where it is due. To accomplish this, you must grant people autonomy. This does not mean you let them run amok doing whatever they want. To make it a power-sharing exercise, autonomy should come with some agreements. In particular, granting true autonomy means giving someone full decision-making power. If you can override someone’s decision, you have just taken their power away. However, to give someone that level of decision-making, you should also ask for some diligence practices to be followed. 

For example, if a person has the autonomy to make decisions about spending money or bringing new technology into a company, they should be required to talk to two or three subject matter experts first. This way they are as best informed as they can be before making the decision. If the information they gather goes against the decision they want to make, they still have the power to make the decision. The consequences would play out accordingly. Sometimes there is a risk worth taking, and sometimes a mistake is made. Either way, there is an inherent accountability structure in autonomy when these agreements are put in place.

Agreements, Commitments, and Contracts

Another way to share power is to create a contracting structure between peers in the organization. If there is a body of work to be done, a group of people can make commitments to work on particular pieces by making agreements with each other. 

If the project is to deliver a set of greeting cards, for instance, you probably need someone with design skills, someone with writing skills, and someone to manage the logistics of getting them published and delivered. Three people who have these capabilities between them can create a contract outlining what each is committing to deliver. 

Such a contract should also include timelines, decision-making processes, and how to deal with conflicts. In this way, the contract becomes the project team’s power-sharing structure.

Role Descriptions Over Job Descriptions

One more way to share power is to use role descriptions instead of job descriptions. The traditional job description is a list of desired skills and expectations for possible responsibilities with no real accountability attached to them. 

Someone gets hired with a job description, and they are given a title, maybe a cubicle, and a never-ending flow of tasks. To change a job description usually means applying to another job in the company, or leaving the company altogether to fill another job description somewhere else.

This is very limiting to the growth of an individual who is stuck in the job description. The company itself also is unable to take advantage of the full spectrum of talents an individual might have when they stick them in a job title. 

We often operate with expectations based on people’s titles and job descriptions. If someone is a project manager, we might expect them to schedule team time to work on things, when in fact, that might be a resource manager’s job. This is why agreements and commitments are so important in power-sharing structures. 

Without a commitment, an expectation is just that. It is something you just think will happen, when in fact, the other party may not share the same understanding. Thwarted expectations are probably one of the world’s largest sources of tension between people! 

Using role descriptions, you can define a person’s responsibilities from a value perspective. Ideally, you are doing work that has value to the business and/or the clients your company serves. The requirements for any project or task should convey that value, and you can include specific accountabilities in a role to deliver it.

A role can also be defined to bring a set of skills to bear in a particular project. Putting specific skill requirements in a role frames the responsibilities from a capability perspective. Only people with the required capabilities can fill the role. Or, you may allow a role to be a development opportunity for someone who wants to learn or practice a new capability.

In all cases, a role should also include accountability in the form of a measurable outcome. Think of it as the commitment a person makes when taking on the role. They agree to deliver a specific outcome, which gives you a way to track and measure their performance.

Once the project is done, the person is free to take on another role. In fact, a person could take on multiple roles if the accountabilities are small and they can deliver on them in small chunks of time.

When you want to bring more power-sharing into your company, think about delegating accountability, sharing decision-making with agreements, and role descriptions as the low-hanging fruit. They are low-risk to implement and experiment with. If they don’t work for you, dig into why they don’t work rather than just falling back on old structures. 

If other managers are unwilling to share power, ask them why. They may be uncomfortable giving others their responsibilities because they don’t trust their direct reports or colleagues. Maybe they just think they can do it better. You may not be able to move others in the company to share their power, but you can certainly experiment in your own team or department. Who knows, you may even inspire others when they see how positive, engaged, and productive your team becomes!