A Culture of Empowering Others

A critical factor for successful leadership is in empowering others (and then trusting them). Practicing this concept isn't necessarily easy, but it goes a long way in creating a culture where people want to work and are engaged. And ultimately, this practice develops more talent in the organization, which increases overall performance.

As a side note, some people argue that you first need the "right people on the bus," a quote that author Jim Collins created, before you empower them with projects or decisions. Click here to find a great article about this topic.

Back to empowering others... a success story is with the company, Pixar. Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar, has been instrumental in creating a culture of empowering others to create great results. I recently read an article, "Pixar's Collective Genius," written by Steve Prokesch, Harvard Business Review. He starts out the article by stating, "Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull exemplifies the greatest form of leadership: empowering others to achieve the extraordinary."

Steve had the opportunity to meet Ed Catmull while working with him regarding a HBR article and said that Mr. Catmull "describes the architecture of Pixar's collective genius--a community where people at all levels support one another." Steve continues to share that "the results speak for themselves: Beginning with Toy Story in 1995 and ending with WALL•E this summer, Pixar has produced nine blockbuster computer-animated films in a row."

Mr. Catmull's leadership qualities that enable a culture of collective genius include:

• Redefining the vision - Creating a vision that will last past the current executive team.
  
• Delegating power - Giving directors tremendous authority. Mr. Catmull and his executive team set budgetary and timeline boundaries, and then the directors and their teams are left alone. When it's time to review progress on a project, the senior executive team's advice is just that - advice - just like everyone else's.
  
• Fighting success syndrome - Realizing that, even with Pixar's success, there are still improvements to make and not everything is figured out.

This article hit home with me and displays a great example of a company who is finding success in empowering its employees. To read the full article and have access to a podcast, click here.

Karen Rulifson

Employee Engagement & Generation Y

Since Gina probably won't blog about this accomplishment, I will do it for her.

After spending months researching the link between employee engagement and leveraging the Millennial Generation (or Gen Y), Gina recently presented her findings at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN. She also just published an article about the topic in Connections, the official magazine for the Professional BusinessWomen of California. You can access the magazine here (the article is on page nine, next to an article written by Lisa Orrell, a Millennial and Generation Relations Expert).

Her findings show that organizations must support engagement in areas such as:

• Leadership development
• Job design
• Career culture
• Engagement survey
• Online action planning

Also, she says that the relationship between employee engagement and an organization's success in leveraging Generation Y is driven by leadership. With Gen Y having the largest employment share by 2011, leadership's ability to engage and leverage this new generations is critical to give organizations the competitive advantage.

I encourage you to read the whole article, and if you have questions about it or want more details, just let us know.

And as a side note, I thought you might enjoy this youtube video about Generation Y. Click here to view it.

Have a good one!

Karen Rulifson