Every day I battle to defeat the psychology of discrimination. Invisible discrimination creates work cultures in which very smart and capable people are systematically disempowered and slowly turned into compliant robots. 

I use the term invisible discrimination because bias is too benign. Discrimination results from using superficial factors such as gender, race, age, weight, social status, or job title to determine the responsibilities, opportunities and resources people are given. When certain classes of people are systematically given lower power jobs, fewer opportunities and resources, their positive impact is muted and their confidence extinguished.

I find it ironic that many male leaders complain to me that women often lack executive presence that primarily comes across by projecting confidence with people who hold more senior positions. However, confidence only arises when people believe that their best efforts will result in success. When people consistently experience their best efforts and ideas being ignored or wasted it is only logical for them to lose their confidence. This is called “learned helplessness.” It is at the root of disempowering workplaces.

This is not a small problem. In fact, research by the Wharton School of Business revealed that 59% of employees feel disempowered. They feel their best efforts do not matter and in most cases, are not even noticed.

These days I am frequently teaching male leaders the impact of the psychology of discrimination on women so I thought I would share with you the Seven Laws of Empowerment. First, I must warn you these laws are rarely followed so reading them might make you initially feel very frustrated and even more disempowered. But I encourage you to set your mind on solution-seeking so that you can help your supervisor empower you, and later I will show you how you might empower yourself.

Empowering leaders and managers have these habits:

“Trust Together.” Build trust with those you work with. What I tell leaders is that when trust is strong, friction is low. Things get done better and faster simply because trust is present. We build trust in four ways. A) Genuinely advocating for your teams’ success rather than your own. B) Making and keeping relevant promises. Don’t just promise to try.  Promise to do. C) Contributing your expertise in a collaborative way. D) Holding everyone accountable for the results they commit to. No favorites, no excuses.

“See it Together.” Articulate the vision; the future state you’re committed to co-create. A clear, shared vision is the essential foundation of empowerment.

“Own it Together.” Discuss and develop the strategy–the core activities that will most powerfully lead to fulfilling the vision. Establish your priorities. These are the key success factors that will make the strategy successful. Empowering leaders develop their leadership agenda for strategy and key priorities with their work teams. Alignment is achieved through collaboration.

“Design it Together.” The design process popularized by Stanford University is based on the two ideas–that action ignites energy, and that continuous improvement invariably leads to the best results. This is where many leaders fail. The design process depends on universal collaboration and continuous learning from failure.

If leaders are intolerant of failure or do not actively engage every team member, especially those who have quiet voices, the team will become compliant and descend into the spiral of groupthink.  Groupthink is the state of superficial agreement when team members say “Yes” when they only mean “Maybe.” For empowerment to thrive solution sessions should be held weekly and follow a discipline of universal, round-robin input followed by voting on the best ideas. Yes, this is very psychologically empowering.

“Do it Together.” When an action path is decided someone must become directly responsible for the desired results. This means they also need decision authority.  Responsibility without authority is inherently disempowering. This is a core reason why so many workplaces are disempowering. The job of the person in charge is to hold team members accountable for specific commitments.  Accountability to achieve goals you committed to brings focus and dedicated energy. However, the team leader has one towering responsibility . . . to remove roadblocks. Team leaders who are committed to make success as easy as possible are thrilling to work for. This is what it actually means to empower others.

“Improve it Together.” Feedback is the engine of design thinking that enables an individual or a team to make continuous improvement.  Empowerment thrives when failure is never final. In fact, failure is redefined as learning.  When teams of people are hungry learners they become rapid improvers. Empowering feedback assumes that the person doing the work knows 90% of what they need to know already. So the empowering feedback dialogue goes like this. “What’s working? Where are you stuck? What’s will you do now? Is there anything I can do to make success significantly easier?” 

At this point if you don’t feel your teammate is on the right track you simply ask “Would you like some suggestions from me?” This coaching dialogue is designed to keep the person doing the work engaged and empowered to find the solutions. (If the person you are empowering is clueless or disconnected from the reality of their results I use a tougher accountability dialogue. Cluelessness is not that rare.  Some people refuse to be empowered. But until you really try, you won’t really know who will thrive in empowering working conditions.)

“Celebrate it Together.” Recent research from UC Berkeley confirms that teams who celebrate are more successful. My motto is: “Recognize effort, reward results.” This formula allows you to be both warm and strong. Managers who only recognize positive results and ignore honest, high effort will become despised. But leaders who reward effort without regard to results will become ineffectual. Do both.

As you look at this research-based list of empowering principles you’ll notice I am not cutting anybody slack because they come from a discriminated group. Anytime you lower performance expectations because of how people have been unfairly treated in the past, you are disempowering them. It’s true that people who are the victims of systematic, invisible discrimination may need additional training, resources and coaching to achieve the same performance levels of advantaged groups, but that’s exactly what institutional empowerment is.

The Bottom Line

Self-empowerment follows the same seven principles

1. Be trustworthy. Make and keep promises that matter to yourself and others.

2. Have a personal vision for your work and your life. Share it. Stand up for it.

3. Engage others who will help you achieve your vision. Quit spending time with sad sacks who make you doubt yourself.  Over-invest in healthy, positive relationships. Everyone needs fans and supporters.

4. Your career and your life are a giant design project. You cannot fail if you don’t quit.  Life will not turn out the way you envision it but it might turn out better!

5. Take responsibility for your results. Do not succumb to learned helplessness.  Your inner story is your source of resilience.  Science confirms that if you can read this you can learn to do anything.

6. Seek feedback from trusted sources. Self-knowledge is our weakest psychological ability. Everyone close to you already knows your faults so there is no sense in ignoring them.  Manage your worst faults so they don’t derail your future.  Build on your strengths.  These are your gifts and using them will make you feel empowered.

7. Celebrate your progress. Everything that has happened to you can be a source of wisdom if you allow it to be.  If you want to feel great just do this every night before you go to sleep.  Reflect on something you did that helped or encouraged another person.  Put all your attention on the goodness of that action.  Feel your humble self-worth.  You will be empowered.

Always remember, the great invisible work that makes visible work successful is making your self and others better.

 

I know many of you might be gagging at the title of this article. After all, what could that nasty narcissist tell us about popularity and leadership? As it turns out, quite a bit.

I always find election time an interesting laboratory of leadership behavior… or misbehavior. This past election cycle is particularly interesting because we had a prominent woman, Hillary Clinton, running against an army of mostly swashbuckling, hard, power men. It’s been crazier than a reality TV show, and would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the fact that these people actually auditioned to run our nation and lead the free world. And even crazier that a reality TV show celebrity ended up winning.

So that brings me to Donald Trump and his shocking popularity among a select number of voters. How could a man who is so obviously flawed, and who has put forth no credible, positive ideas, be so popular? And he is popular. Even if you despise him you are probably interested in what he has to say. Psychologists and leadership researchers are not surprised by his ability to mesmerize. Let me explain why.

Harvard researchers John Neffinger and Matthew Kohut explain in their book “Compelling People” that human beings are wired to follow people who are both strong and warm. Strength is primarily communicated through confidence. Warmth is demonstrated through empathy. It’s pretty simple. If you believe a leader understands your personal hopes and fears, is rock-solid confident, and can defend you from your fears and help you realize your hopes, they will gain your support.

The world is a very confusing and scary place right now. The forces of violence and our economic well-being seem out of control. So when someone shows up brimming with insane levels of confidence (strength), and who promises to defend you against your greatest fears (empathy-warmth) they will get your attention.

One other thing, we like things simple. We hate to hear that things are complicated. We want to depend on people who seem clear and committed and communicate simple solutions. Believe it or not, Donald Trump scores very high with people who share common fears, want simple solutions (like building a wall), and allow themselves to be caught in the tractor beam of his confidence.

Trump’s leadership persona is so powerful that his supporters don’t care that he is self-obsessed, because they believe that his interests in their interests overlap. And because he’s a man. Psychologists tell us that men can get away with a lot more abrasive, self aggrandizing behavior than women. In fact, it’s kind of expected. Trump is just behaving like a super-strong man. After all, his leadership style is not that different from a young Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Winston Churchill.

The problem with this leadership style is that it requires the leader to be a genius. If you are truly that confident in yourself, you’d better know what the hell you’re doing… otherwise you’re just a belligerent idiot.

Now let’s take a look at Hillary Clinton. She too seemed confident. Her problem was that for many voters it was unclear whether she was fighting for them or fighting for herself. This made her score low in perceived trustworthiness. This is a big problem for a woman candidate. Gender research is clear that we expect men to be self-interested. So men can advocate for themselves, their wealth, status and careers without losing credibility. However, we don’t like women doing that. Thousands of years of human culture have biased our minds to trust women who advocate for others but make their personal interests invisible.

When I’m helping women advance in the workplace or get raises I coach them to make those requests so that they can make bigger and better contributions to the organization. I counsel them not to say things like: “I deserve this.” I agree, this may be unfair but it’s how our brains are wired.  If you want some more evidence consider Elizabeth Warren’s popularity with her supporters.

Elizabeth Warren has become a powerful female leader because she projects very strong ‘mother-energy.’ Her message and policy position strongly advocate for low-power people. That seems ‘right’ for a woman leader. Hillary was trying to adopt a similar leadership communication style but did not convince many doubters that she would put their interests above her and Bill’s interests. (Please, Hillary supporters don’t be mad at me, I’m only saying what gender research explains about the way she polled.)

Ideal leadership lies somewhere between the magical synergy of strength and warmth. Or, as I teach it, between hard and soft. That synergy point is called SMART Power.

As a point of reference, two leaders spring to mind as models of SMART power. Abraham Lincoln was extraordinarily strong. He had an unwavering commitment to keeping our nation united even as he fought to transcend our founder’s ‘original sin’ of legalizing slavery. The consistency of his advocacy for national unity and freedom for all made him the immovable force that was essential for success. He was truly strong in hard moments. At the same time he possessed and expressed transformative empathy for everyone from slave to slave-owner and for soldiers on both the North and South.

Eleanor Roosevelt is the second SMART political leader I think of. She was strong. She had to be. She lived in the same White House with her charismatic, brilliant philandering husband because she believed she had a gift to give our nation that could only be given as the First Lady.

As First Lady she wrote an internationally syndicated newspaper column that became the conscience of the nation. She wrote passionately of the plight of the poor and the exploited. She helped galvanize political will for the New Deal. She was nearly single-handedly responsible for the desegregation of our army and the GI Bill. She was a principal driver of the United Nations and the main architect of the UN’s Declaration of Universal Human Rights. All the while she was told she was both too uppity and too ugly to publicly promote these ideas. She was strong and warm, hard and soft… SMART.

History shows that one thing is clear. Leaders who are only strong or hard get us into the most trouble. They use fear to inspire loyalty and blind support. Nevertheless, it is easy for such leaders to become powerful. The leaders who presided over most of the 20^th century were Stalin, Mao and Hitler.

Leaders who are empathetic but not strong quickly lose their power. For the most part we don’t even remember their names.

So how about you? If you are naturally empathetic the world is calling for you to be strong. Be clear on your vision. Be unafraid and relentless in the advocacy for a better business, healthier and happier employees, enriched customers and a sustainable future in order to create profitable growth.

If you are strong and naturally confident the world is calling you to pursue more than your own self-interest.  Tap into your deep moral ambition. Make your children proud of what you’re accomplishing.

Put simply… our future is calling you to be Lincoln not Trump.

Note: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by our contributors and authors are not necessarily those of Real Leaders.