No, this is not your expected headline, but it is true!
The Best New Leaders are Created in a Vacuum
No, this is not your expected headline, but it is true!
Vacuum is a term used to describe the complete absence of anything within a space and a word that feels harder to spell than it should be! It is also the most important thing to remember when creating new leaders.
I have successfully transitioned from one role to another, where I have had to elevate someone from within the team to take over for me. The transition from individual contributor to first-level leader is the most challenging transition to make. But I have found the right language and strategies to use to help with that transition, and surprising for many people it is all about creating a vacuum.
This process needs to occur in those bigger career transition moments, but they also need to occur in everyday moments with your team. As a leader, you need to create vacuum’s, with regularity, as opportunities to grow new leaders.
To build an understanding of the merit for this language, I’ll take a brief excursion into physics.
Photo by Jim Kalligas on Unsplash
The properties of gas
We are all aware of the three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas (lets ignore plasma for now). Solids are constrained in size by amount of a compound and the molecular structure it forms into in a solid state. Liquids will occupy a consistent volume but the shape of that can change depending on the container. But gas is unique.
Gas is bound by the ideal gas law, which stipulates its pressure and temperature can be described by the volume it fills. If you inject gas into a vacuum within a container of any shape, it will expand until it fills the complete volume. For example, fart in an elevator and see if you can smell it at every location ;-).
To extend this, if you have an empty container and put a volume of gas in it, the gas molecules will expand and occupy all the space in that container. If you have a container and partly fill it with water. The same volume of gas you inject will fill a smaller volume (at a slightly higher pressure). There is less room for the gas to expand and it cannot fill the entire space because of the space occupied by the liquid.
This is where the physics ends because I want to draw the analogy to leadership. Thanks for hanging in there!
Image created by Author using Dall-E 2
Gas and leadership — an exceptionally useful analogy
Everyone within a team is a leader, they might not always recognise it, but everyone contributes to leading the team. It can be through positional leadership, competence-based leadership, informational-based leadership, contextual leadership, or leadership of self (the most important part — and everyone does this).
Now, imagine that all the potential leadership in your team is a container. The parts filled by the team occupy spaces like a solid or a liquid in that container. Imagine someone that can do one or a few things really well, and everyone looks to them for that thing. That is competence leadership and can be imagined as a solid within that container.
Someone else on the team knows how to connect other people with the needed information or additional context, and everyone knows to ask them. They are the connectors through information or context and can be imagined as liquids within that container. Fluidly filling gaps between the experts (the solids).
Hopefully, in your mind now you have some container pictured, and within it there are large chunky solids and some liquid filling a bunch of the space in that container.
Now, important for this analogy is that the positional leader (the person in charge) will normally fill the rest of the container. They need to be sufficiently competent, adept at connecting people, and aware of the direction the team is moving to be the ‘leader’ of the team. In this analogy, you can imagine them as a gas within that container. They fill the rest of the space.
Here is the great thing about recognising this, if you are the leader filling the space, you can create opportunities to grow leadership within your team by creating vacuums within that container. Once you create a little vacuum, by stepping out of that space and leaving it empty, you can apply some heat and pressure on the other leaders in the team and encourage them to fill that space.
But the most important aspect of this analogy is that you can’t stay in that space if you want them to develop a new skill, more competence, context or knowledge. You need to leave it. Too often leaders give delegations, trying to empower their team members to do something, but then stay in that space trying to help them. If you delegate or empower poorly (which many people do), you are still filling part of that space and limiting their growth. You need to leave a gap for them to fill.
Do not empower, emancipate
I first heard an analogy like this in the exceptionally powerful leadership book, ‘Turn the Ship Around!’ by David L. Marquet, describing his leadership journey on the USS Sante Fe. His exploration of the topic focused on using a different language. He believes that empowerment doesn’t help grow leadership.
Empowerment focuses on sharing your power with someone else. The very term means that you are giving some of your power for someone else to use (I am not using the term as it is used for social empowerment, which is necessary. I am using it as the word used for workplace delegation). This doesn’t create leaders. This creates better followers (which is important but doesn’t scale well). Unlocking the leadership potential of your team is far more impactful. Because of that realisation, David identified that he should not be empowering. He should be emancipating. This term is not often used, but the intention in that language is to leave space for them to work out how to solve the problems and then remove yourself from the problem.
I have extended this language into the vacuum metaphor. Leaders are not created by empowering, giving them some of your ‘gas’ to use for a while (this doesn’t sound good, and it isn’t). Leaders are created in a vacuum through the emancipation of you from that space.
Now, how do you do it…. Or, more importantly, how do you do it well?
Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash
Creating Vacuum’s in Leadership
You have two real targets within your scope as a leader to create the space needed to grow the leadership within your team.
If you go back to that container you had pictured in your mind, you can imagine that you will create little vacuum pockets for the team to grow into (expanding as solids or liquids), and if the container stays the same size, eventually you won’t have anything to do, the team will be doing it all. The entire container will be full!
This should be a goal of all leaders. However, it will rarely happen for one key reason — emerging problems. It is the emerging problems that make the container change shape and size.
So — you have two options for creating new leaders. Create space within the existing container, and watch for when it changes shape and work out if you need to fill it.
Let us work through these two scenarios a little.
Create leaders inside the container
Suppose you are stepping out of a part of the container that could be considered part of the regular work scope (removing yourself from a space inside the container). You should look for people to fill it based on two criteria.
Firstly, they have comparable skills in different area. That is, they are good at X, challenge them with Y at a similar level of complexity. This is skills broadening, a horizontal stretch opportunity.
Secondly, if they have less experience in the same area, that is, they are learning about X, challenge them with X+. This is a skills level-up, a vertical stretch opportunity.
In both of these scenarios, people would often use the term empowerment, again, don’t empower. You need to describe the outcomes you want to achieve, and any real constraints they should be aware of, and let them figure out how to do it. Your role in both of these scenarios should be one of a coach (learn more about coaching leadership in this book). This is emancipation. The intent statement is the direction of growth, the constraints define the space you are leaving for them. Let them grow, and support them when they get stuck. A regular ‘whats on your mind?’ question is good at understanding where they might feel like they are struggling.
Create leaders when the container changes
If the container changes shape (creating a new empty space), and you notice a new type of problem that needs to be solved, you have a few options again.
In this case you need to be more deliberate in building the team to address the problem. My leadership philosophy is;
A leader must see the shape of people, and the space in problems, and fit the people to those problems. If the space is to big, the stretch to far, you have failed them. If the space is to tight, and there is no space to grow, you have failed them.
So, if the container changes shape, the first thing you need to do is gauge the space that is created. Then you need to look to the team and see the shape of the people within that container. Now you need to take the right shaped people and fit them to that newly created space, and support them to grow. Importantly, if you want to use the new vacuum created in the container to create leaders, you cannot step into it. You need to help them see the shape of the problem, but not be in there solving it with them (or if you are, only ever offer options, do not make decisions).
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Here’s the secret
This analogy I have described is your specific role as a Leader. Achieving outcomes for the business and applying appropriate controls and guidance to the team is your role as a manager. The single greatest metric for a leader is not what they achieve but the number of future leaders they create.
Additionally, if you do this well, you create more leadership capacity to look for emerging problems. Too often, the leaders are so busy doing they do not spend enough time looking and thinking.
Busy people will remain busy because they are always trying to fill the container. As the container changes shape, the leader must get busier to fill the new shape. This is futile, and despite how well you think you’re doing, vacuums are being created throughout your leadership space that someone is filling, or not. You are not being deliberate about it, but it is still happening.
At best someone is trying to fill a gap you’ve forgotten without any guidance, or at worst, no one is doing it, and it will cause you issues in the future.
So, Leaders — think on this and see what you are doing to grow future leaders. Are you leaving them a vacuum? Are you defining the space you want them to fill and getting out of there so they can grow and fill it? Think hard on this, because if you are not, you are not doing your job.
I am interested in unlocking the full potential of the people I interact with. I am a leader first and an engineer second. If you liked this story, you can follow me here to get an alert to your email address when I publish next. You can also join Medium and get access to all of my articles, and the articles of all the other wonderful creators on Medium through this link.
I’ve included a few articles that continue to get read on Medium below. Nearly all of my pieces are posted to Sparks Publication, aimed at using my writing as a spark that can transfer from my mind to yours and maybe start a flame. Please follow the publication, and if you’d like to write an article, please submit your interest here.
By Leon Purton on August 26, 2023.
Exported from Medium on December 22, 2023.