Why Smart NGO Leaders Stop Telling Their Teams What To Do

What if your team keeps coming to you with problems—not because they lack initiative, but because of how you’re leading them?

If you feel like you’re constantly answering questions, solving problems, and being the go-to for every decision, it can quickly become exhausting. You want a capable, proactive team—but instead, you may feel like the bottleneck. The truth is, many leaders unintentionally create this dynamic, even when they believe they’re empowering their teams.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to truly empower your team and reduce your own workload by:

• Recognizing the hidden beliefs that may be keeping your team dependent on you
• Shifting your approach so your team starts thinking, deciding, and taking ownership
• Building a more independent, proactive team that frees up your time and increases overall impact

Press play now to discover how to stop being the bottleneck and start leading a team that thinks and acts independently.

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What Is Your Leadership Style? Free Quiz:

Want to know how to lead better? It starts by understanding your leadership style. To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style?” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader. Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Why Smart NGO Leaders Stop Telling Their Teams What To Do

Torrey: [00:00:00] If your team keeps coming to you with problems instead of solutions, you might think they need more guidance, but what if it's the way you're leading that's actually the reason? So how often do you use your team's ideas? When they come to you with a problem, do you tell them what to do? Or do you ask them what they think?

Because many leaders believe they're empowering their teams when in reality they're doing the exact opposite. Hi, my name is Torrey and I'm the host of the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. And after coaching over 900 leaders in the humanitarian and development sector, I've seen the same patterns again and again.

Leaders who care deeply about their impact, who work incredibly hard, but who are unknowingly creating more work for themselves because of how they lead their team. And most of this comes down to a few common myths [00:01:00] about empowerment that once you're aware of you can start to overcome. So today I'm gonna share three of the most common ones, so that you can start to recognize them and shift them. Because when you truly empower your team, everyone wins. Your team grows and takes ownership. You get your time back and your organization becomes more effective because people are no longer waiting on you to move things forward and to answer questions.

Okay. Myth number one, my culture doesn't support empowerment. This is something I hear often from leaders especially who are taking my course. In my culture, the leader is expected to have the answers. Or in my culture, we tell people what to do. And while that may be true at a broader level, here's where the myth comes in.

It does not have to define how YOU lead your team. I've worked with a leader who [00:02:00] believed his team would never accept being asked for their ideas, that it simply wouldn't work in his context. But when he tested it, he discovered something surprising. Not only did his team have ideas, but many of them he found were better than the ones he would've come up with himself.

And when he realized this, he also realized that it wasn't the culture holding his team back, it was his assumption about his team that was holding them back. So culture is not fixed, and within your team you have more influence than you think. Yes, some individuals may resist, but more often than not, people rise to the level of leadership they're given.

Okay. Myth number two. Empowerment takes too much time. This one feels very real. It's faster to tell someone what to do than to coach them and ask them for solutions. [00:03:00] But here's the trap. Every time you tell someone what to do, you train them to come back to you the next time. So while it may feel faster in the moment, it's actually creating more dependency on you and more work over the long run because you become the bottleneck. On the other hand, if you spend time upfront building your team's thinking and decision making, you create independence, you reduce future interruptions, you reduce repeated questions, and you gain back time in the long run. And here's something really important. Coaching doesn't have to take a long time. In fact, the coaching framework I teach uses just four key questions that can take up to five minutes. If your coaching conversations are taking too long, it's probably because you're still trying to solve the problem for your team instead of helping them think for themselves. Myth [00:04:00] number three. Empowerment should feel good. This is the one that surprises people the most because we assume that if something is working, it should feel comfortable.

But empowerment often feels uncomfortable, especially in the beginning. For your team, because they're not used to making decisions, and for you, because you're used to being the one who does. And this is where many leaders stop. Not because empowerment doesn't work, but because it feels uncomfortable and uncertain.

So you start to doubt yourself. You might think, what if they make the right decision? You might think, what if they make the wrong decision? Or what if the quality drops, or what if I'm still responsible for the end result? So what do you do? You step back in, you take control again, and the cycle continues.

But here's the shift, that discomfort doesn't mean something has gone wrong. It just means that you're doing [00:05:00] something new. When you learn to expect that discomfort and allow it, it becomes more manageable, and over time it'll start to fade. So let's bring this all together. The three myths that often keep leaders stuck are, number one, that culture prevents empowerment.

Number two, that empowerment takes too much time. And number three, that empowerment should feel comfortable. But when you challenge these beliefs, you will start to lead differently. You stop solving every problem. You start building your team's capacity, and you begin to create more impact with less personal strain.

So here's a question to reflect on this week. Where might you be unintentionally disempowering your team because of the way that you're thinking? And what is that costing you? Because if this doesn't change, you'll keep [00:06:00] working harder while your team stays dependent on you. And that is a recipe for more work, stress and burnout.

And next week we're going to take this one step further because empowerment isn't just about your team, it's also about how you're either empowering or limiting yourself as a leader. Okay, until then, keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do, or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz: What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better [00:07:00] leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it.