When I think back on how I’ve grown professionally during the course of my career, I remember the occasions when I felt recognized and valued — and I remember when I felt undermined and humiliated. These experiences have been instructive in how I think about what it means to be a leader, to be a mentor, and what it means to teach.
The Power of Empowerment: A High School Revelation
Through years of studying, I started to think that math didn’t like me and that I wouldn’t say I liked it either. That was until I encountered my junior-year algebra teacher, Mr Thompson. He had the wonderful ability to explain things that I thought were incomprehensible. Even more important, he believed in me… And I, finally, began to believe in myself, as well.
In one class, I messed up a problem in calculus, ending up with an entirely wrong solution. Rather than embarrass me in front of my peers, Mr Thompson asked me to stay behind. He spent an extra few minutes walking me through the different steps to show me where I had gone wrong and what I needed to do to correct it. He wasn’t trying to make me look stupid, he had confidence in my ability to get to the right answers. Through positive reinforcement and feedback that was encouraged by his belief in my ability, I went from failing the mid-term to being a peer tutor for the same class by the end of the school year.
A Professional Difficulty
My first job upon graduating college gave me a lesson in the corrosive power of degradation. The manager there thought that publicly shaming employees was a great way to motivate them. Any mistake I made was pointed out and examined in every team meeting. Once a report I had worked on for weeks had gone out with a data point I had missed. My manager called me into the weekly meeting to grill me on it, asking me if I was really ‘cut out’ for this kind of work out of the clearly implied option that I was not.
The experience knocked my confidence. I began to doubt everything I did, and I shrank from taking on new tasks because, without fail, public humiliation was on the horizon. My productivity and spirits drowned. I soon departed that job. The atmosphere had become poisonous, and not just in my case or even mine and a few other staff members, but it was that way for many of us.
Embracing Empowerment
This has instilled in me the desire to strive to be a transformational leader and mentor, rather than the once self-professed transformational leader within the organization who merely sought to devalue me and those around me. My first team leader was not the nicest person in the office — my former manager had warned me. Under his supervision, I was constantly scolded.
‘You really suck at everything — even more than I do!’ another colleague shared. He would get frustrated when he was in a bad mood, swear unnecessarily loudly, and periodically yell when I asked questions. The only way to advance in the firm was to be promoted in-house — that’s how I left. And that’s how I ended up coming full circle working with Sarah, one of the members of my team in my next job, an extraordinarily talented and creative yet insecure person. She had some really good ideas, but was terrified of delivering them.
To counter this, I gave her ownership over small projects, called her aside privately to provide constructive feedback, and praised her publicly when she did well. Within a few months, Sarah’s confidence was growing. She was taking the initiative, her parts of the project were very good, and her ideas were noticeable and added value to the overall project. It felt great to see her transformation and it confirmed once again the value of positive reinforcements and support.
The Lesson Learned
The message is obvious, I think: empowerment encourages growth and confidence; shaming and putting people down encourages stagnation and fear. It’s one of those things you discover in writing about people that turns out to be true for everyone. Empowerment is believing in someone, supporting the work they do, encouraging and giving the tools they need, noticing their effort, and celebrating their success. And not seeing mistakes as a failure but as an opportunity to learn.
I have come to appreciate that we all have the capacity to lift others, to serve as a force for good for our students, our colleagues, the people we supervise, and the friends and family surrounding us. When we ask good questions, when we shed light rather than the leeches on new or unexpected territory, we not only enable others to flourish and move forward, but we also make the world a brighter place for all of us.