33. Expansive Leadership: Empowering Your Team to Lead Without You
Traditional leadership focuses on giving orders, but true influence comes from embedding your vision so deeply that others can lead effectively without you. As an executive coach, I see many leaders struggling with the shift from directing traffic to creating sustainable impact through their teams.
Drawing from my immigrant background and experience as a finance leader, I developed an approach I call expansive leadership. This method centers on providing rich context, teaching frameworks for decision-making, and building deep trust with team members.
Join me this week to discover how sharing not just what to do but how you think empowers your teams to act confidently even when you’re not present. Expansive leadership is the key to creating high-performing teams that understand your vision, and I show you how this approach leads to exceptional team retention, truly independent decision-making, and the development of new leaders who can carry the vision forward.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to lead with context instead of control to build sustainable success.
The framework for teaching your thinking process to team members.
Why traditional leadership creates a dependency trap that burns out leaders.
How to empower teams to make decisions confidently in your absence.
The four key elements of implementing expansive leadership.
How to transition from giving answers to teaching frameworks.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Real leadership isn't about giving orders, it's about expanding your influence so deeply that others can lead for you, even when you're not in the room. Today we're talking about the secret to expansive leadership, embedding your vision into the culture around you.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, today's episode is on expansive leadership. How to lead with vision everywhere. This is a topic that I have been coaching a lot on recently for the women leaders that I coach around how to expand their leadership, how to coach people on their teams, how to lead from a way that is providing context for the people that they lead, and having them understand not just what to do, but how to think and what matters most to you.
So this is something that I had done very early on in my career. I think it's something around being an immigrant child and really providing context for people. I think part of being in a culture where your parents don't really understand the world that you're living in and me trying to adapt to the world as well as explain it to them, I think it just made me really good at talking from a perspective of relatedness and giving context to things that were more expansive that allowed people to understand the dynamics and the environment better.
And sometimes when I would lead in this manner, other leaders would think that I was too open with my direct reports or they would feel I give them too much information. But one of the things that really mattered to me as being a leader was trusting the people on my team. One of the things that I used to say to my team is that I have your back, so you better have my back. So I'm not going to say the swear word because there could be kids in the car when you're listening to this. But this was a big piece of that. I would give people on my team a lot of context about the interpersonal relationships of people that they would be dealing with.
Obviously, I was in finance, so when we are interacting with other leaders that have their own departments, it's important that my team members understood that context. But I also would expect their professionalism and their emotional maturity to have this information and be confidential about it. I just think that it could be everywhere. I think it's helpful to have that, but being a finance leader, you have access to so much information that you're trusting your team with. And so I would just again, from leading with my vision, is to have that expectation and share it very broadly and wisely.
So, that's how I led. But what helped me in being this expansive leader was I never had to be in every single room. Really what would happen is that I would share so much of what I valued, how I thought about things, and I would trust my people on my team to be there to advocate for me. And if I had to have a pre-meeting with them to make it clear or ensure that they had the latest information, I would do so. But too many leaders spend their time directing traffic, telling people what to do. And it works until you're not there. It works and then they are still using you as the bottleneck because they don't know how to think on their own or they don't understand your vision enough to trust themselves in that moment.
So when I think about expansive leadership, it is really about you as a leader understanding the way you think, your framework, what you value and imparting that to the people on your team with the context that they're in so that they understand how this all relates together and works. So the most powerful leaders embed how they think and what they value into their teams and organizations. That is truly expansive leadership.
And what happens when you do this is you create an army of people aligned with your vision, capable of making powerful decisions without needing you to micromanage them. They don't need to come to you every time. They understand that there's a framework that you've given them, and that is super empowering because then they can go and do things and they can try to explain it to you if you're, "Hey, that didn't really seem aligned with me," but that's still a conversation.
And so the problem with traditional leadership is telling versus teaching. It's directing behavior. It gives you short-term wins. And I think people earlier on in their career where they're just learning to do things and not having to come up with complex ways to solve complex problems, this is probably easier, right?
If you're teaching somebody how to clean a car, maybe it's just easier to give them the high level. But even so, you might want to say, "Hey, at the end of this, I want to see this car shining. I want you to feel proud of what you did. I want you to look out for the specs and to do a once over." Even in that scenario, right, giving people vision also gives them ownership and empowerment to create that vision along with you, right? To embrace that versus just telling them what to do. There needs to be a combination.
But teaching mindset and vision builds long-term success and sustainable success. It helps people to trust themselves versus just saying this is how you need to clean a car. The next one is there's a dependency trap with traditional leadership. When you don't lead with vision, you create teams that are dependent on you for every answer instead of thinking independently.
This also happens when people lead with a lot of fear. I shared this feedback with one of my leaders because he was quite scary to the people he led. And I had shared with him that they are more focused on pleasing him than doing what's right for the business, even though I knew he cared most about doing what's right for the business.
So this becomes that dependency trap when people fear you so much that they're, "I need to go check in on that person because I don't want them to yell at me." And it's also energy draining. Feeling you're constantly solving other people's problems will burn you out and holds your team back from growing. They don't feel empowered.
So if you go on vacation, they're, "We can't make these decisions without Sarah because Sarah needs to be here for all those decisions." That's not expansive leadership. It's not a good use of your time. And you could be leading at a very much more higher level, empowering your team at a higher level. And I know some people might say this feels really scary for me, but this is also really empowering for you as you embrace this as a skill set, as a leadership move for you because when you're starting to delegate, this will also become a lot easier if people understand the framework from which you come from.
So, when I first started training people, I realized for myself that telling them what to do wasn't good enough. If they didn't know why it mattered or how to think about it, they couldn't adapt when things change. They couldn't see beyond the actual problem. And so the way to really move past that is not just with instructions, but really that framework mattered most. Here's how I think about this. Here's what matters to me, particularly when it is complex situations where they are maybe having to think on their feet.
And the outcome is that people weren't just doing tasks, they were solving problems in alignment. And oftentimes, both my team members and the people that I coach would say this. What would Yann do? What would Yann say? It's almost I have imparted so much of how I think and the framework that I think in their minds that they have that to tap into to solve problems from my perspective.
And it's not to say that they don't have their own perspective because they're also interacting with that and making connections with themselves about what matters, why it matters, and what they need to protect. So it's multiplied my leadership and allowed me to trust others deeply. I even do this in childcare. When I think about training the person that's taking care of my children, I'm really talking about replicating myself. And I talk about how to prioritize things, that quality time with the kids matter more than having the house be clean. So making those decisions in the moment doesn't feel so confusing for the person. They can remember what I think is most important.
And in terms of a real life example, it's definitely when I am on vacation. So a lot of high-achieving women on vacation and really imparting what matters to your team members so that you're not always pulled in, but also that they discern and they know when to reach out to you, that they understand that there are going to be some high-stake situations that are important to reach out to you for.
So, for example, I remember I had a big trip to Patagonia. And my team member was dealing with a really big accounting issue with the accounting team. And she understood because she knew what mattered to me. And I said, "Listen, you need to keep the CEO up to date with what transpires here and how it's going to impact our numbers. And this is why it matters and here are all of the steps. And let me know if something is not going the way, it's not making progress, people are not getting answers, call me in."
And so they were able to solve a lot of the problems, but there were a lot of internal pressures as well. There was a senior leader that was very upset with my team member because she was the one messaging this. I had messaged it before, but they were really digging into it and I think the senior leader realized that this was going to look really bad for her. And so she was very emotionally upset with my leader.
And so my leader had reached out to me while I was on vacation and I definitely stepped in with other leaders to help resolve the situation, but also to have a conversation with that senior leader because she was having lots of emotions and my team member had done what she could do to move the process along, but this was a moment where this leader needed to hear from me directly. And so expansive leadership doesn't just mean that I'm never there, but I'm there when I need to be for the conversations that I need to have.
And so it allowed me to be able to go on vacation even when this big thing was going on and know that my team member was okay, that she could move things forward, but that she could also reach out to me when needed. But this is the impact of having that expansive leadership and giving that level of context. I can swoop in when I need to and my time is used valuably and my team member is also empowered to do what she needs to do to move things ahead.
There is a lot of trust that's needed to have expansive leadership, but the more you embrace this style of leading, the more you work with your team members in this way, the more you trust that they are leading with your thoughts and your visions in mind and making decisions from that standpoint, the more free you're going to feel in the future and the more set up for success they will be. And as this keeps expanding, the more things you can take on and you're not going to feel you have to be in every single room, talking to every single person because there are people on your team that have that capability.
So here are some key elements of expansive leadership that I want you to think about as you're leading and to build this skill set for yourself. You may be on this continuum. Maybe you’re like, "I already lead with vision, but there are other things that I want to do." Let me walk you through this four step process to really implement expansive leadership for yourself.
So the first one is lead with context, not control. Always provide the why and vision behind actions, not just the steps. I know sometimes when we are in this very rushing world and we're wanting to give orders quickly, we want to sometimes pass over the why and the vision. But this doesn't really set us up for success long term. So really providing that context. And over time, you're going to be able to provide that context in a quicker manner than in the beginning. So notice that as you build this skill out, it's actually going to be a lot quicker and easier for you to give them all of that context.
So first, lead with context, not control. And the next one is teach your thinking. Share the mental models and priorities you use to make decisions so that others can mirror your judgment. So oftentimes with my direct reports or even if they were senior leaders on my level, I would let them know this is my prioritization. We are focused on, for example, finalizing the forecast to get this done on time, but we also need to make sure that the messaging is aligned too.
So these are the pathways of us doing that and really sharing with them my thought process and my prioritization so that they are with me on the journey and they are not confused and they're not scared. And they are also understanding how to make judgments of their prioritizations too.
So if I had a COO who was, "We've got this big launch going on and I have forecasts due," I would give them enough context to understand the amount of time they would need to spend on this, but also what really matters in terms of their messaging and the points that they would need to do. So really teaching the way I think, the way that I expected to go to the board with our forecast and also the ask, right? Noticing those things.
The next one is empowering with a framework. Give people guiding principles, not a rulebook. For example, we prioritize customer experience above everything else, even speed. So that gives people an understanding, come back to me if there is something that is in the way of that so we can problem solve together. It is not all-or-nothing, but giving people that guiding principle allows them again to feel empowered and to understand a framework and to trust in a framework that is coming from you.
The last one is expect ownership, not just compliance. This is really where this expansive leadership really runs through and how people who worked with me really liked working with me because they said they feel empowered by me, they know that I trust them, I give them enough leeway to grow and to learn, but I give them enough guidance to help them along the way.
So you want to be a leader who's creating a culture where people feel proud to carry your vision forward because they understand it, not because they were told to do it. The people that I am teaching, I'm also getting them to buy into my vision as I'm explaining my vision to them. I'm explaining what matters. I remember I couldn't be in a meeting where it was for the women's group that I was leading, but I gave them a vision of what I saw.
I said, "I really want this to be a big event for us. I want you to work with the team to come up with really great ideas to increase the number of people registered for this event. I want this event to be something people are so excited to share with other people and that we're so proud of having this event and raising this money for charity and also letting people know how important it is to empower other women and how our group is, that's our mission. So let's make that so. Run this meeting in that way with that in mind and come back to me and let me know how it goes."
So again, I couldn't be in all the meetings. I had a whole bunch of other meetings. And I didn't allow myself to say it can't be done without me. I said it can. I just need to really explain to people why it's important and give them the ownership to hold my vision, to take it forward, and then of course to ask me questions, but not just to be a soldier, but to be a leader in it. And that's really what expansive leadership is about. It's about creating other leaders and expanding your own leadership potential, not through doing, but through your way of being and sharing what your vision is, what truly matters to you.
So, what does expansive leadership in action look like? Your team can make decisions confidently when you're away. Your brand, reputation, and leadership values stay consistent across projects even without your constant oversight. And then lastly, problems get solved faster because everyone is thinking at a higher level. And of course, the bonus, you create new leaders, not just better followers. You create people you can depend on and that they can create leadership within their teams and filter down the way that you lead to other people. So it's becomes expansive for the whole organization if you're leading in this manner.
So as a closing exercise, you can ask yourself these questions and start leading with your own vision. So firstly, ask yourself what principles do I want others to operate by even when I'm not there? This is so important. Whether you are training somebody on childcare, whether you're training somebody on as your successor, or whether you're training somebody to take over for your department once things transition, you want to ask yourself what matters most.
And the next one is how would I explain how I think about success, priorities, conflicts, or challenges? Again, this is super important because you're not just imparting what to do, you're imparting how you think about how you solve these issues and it gives them more expansive context to do it in.
And then lastly, where am I giving answers instead of teaching frameworks? So you want to notice for yourself, where am I doing that? If the problem is very straightforward and it's one and done, then you might just want to give answers. You don't need to give a whole playbook if somebody's just coming to you once trying to do something.
But if this is a relationship that's building over time, this person is working with you for a long time, they're part of your team, teaching these frameworks and putting that upfront investment in sharing the framework with them is going to be invaluable to you and it's going to save you a lot of time, money, and energy later on because then you're going to have somebody who knows how to do things aligned with the way you would do them. And that's super powerful. It empowers them as well. And it creates more sustainable growth because people want to be empowered, they want to lead more.
And one of the things that I was really proud of is that people that worked with me wanted to work with me for a long time. The retention on my team were always high because people felt they could grow with me. They felt empowered by me. And they felt they could expand their own leadership and lead in their own way without me micromanaging them.
Your challenge is to pick one situation this week where you would normally just give directions and instead teach your thinking and vision. Let people know what's important to you, why it's important to you, what would success look like? How you would deal with conflicts as they arise?
So my final thought here is that expansive leadership isn't about controlling every move. It's about multiplying your impact by creating leaders who think, act, and solve problems aligned with your vision. That's the real mark of influence. And it's how you create a leadership legacy that lasts long after you've left the room.
All right, go out there, try it on, and report back. I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to DM me via LinkedIn and let me know how expansive leadership is working out for you. All right, until next time, have a wonderful week ahead. Take good care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, today's episode is on expansive leadership. How to lead with vision everywhere. This is a topic that I have been coaching a lot on recently for the women leaders that I coach around how to expand their leadership, how to coach people on their teams, how to lead from a way that is providing context for the people that they lead, and having them understand not just what to do, but how to think and what matters most to you.
So this is something that I had done very early on in my career. I think it's something around being an immigrant child and really providing context for people. I think part of being in a culture where your parents don't really understand the world that you're living in and me trying to adapt to the world as well as explain it to them, I think it just made me really good at talking from a perspective of relatedness and giving context to things that were more expansive that allowed people to understand the dynamics and the environment better.
And sometimes when I would lead in this manner, other leaders would think that I was too open with my direct reports or they would feel I give them too much information. But one of the things that really mattered to me as being a leader was trusting the people on my team. One of the things that I used to say to my team is that I have your back, so you better have my back. So I'm not going to say the swear word because there could be kids in the car when you're listening to this. But this was a big piece of that. I would give people on my team a lot of context about the interpersonal relationships of people that they would be dealing with.
Obviously, I was in finance, so when we are interacting with other leaders that have their own departments, it's important that my team members understood that context. But I also would expect their professionalism and their emotional maturity to have this information and be confidential about it. I just think that it could be everywhere. I think it's helpful to have that, but being a finance leader, you have access to so much information that you're trusting your team with. And so I would just again, from leading with my vision, is to have that expectation and share it very broadly and wisely.
So, that's how I led. But what helped me in being this expansive leader was I never had to be in every single room. Really what would happen is that I would share so much of what I valued, how I thought about things, and I would trust my people on my team to be there to advocate for me. And if I had to have a pre-meeting with them to make it clear or ensure that they had the latest information, I would do so. But too many leaders spend their time directing traffic, telling people what to do. And it works until you're not there. It works and then they are still using you as the bottleneck because they don't know how to think on their own or they don't understand your vision enough to trust themselves in that moment.
So when I think about expansive leadership, it is really about you as a leader understanding the way you think, your framework, what you value and imparting that to the people on your team with the context that they're in so that they understand how this all relates together and works. So the most powerful leaders embed how they think and what they value into their teams and organizations. That is truly expansive leadership.
And what happens when you do this is you create an army of people aligned with your vision, capable of making powerful decisions without needing you to micromanage them. They don't need to come to you every time. They understand that there's a framework that you've given them, and that is super empowering because then they can go and do things and they can try to explain it to you if you're, "Hey, that didn't really seem aligned with me," but that's still a conversation.
And so the problem with traditional leadership is telling versus teaching. It's directing behavior. It gives you short-term wins. And I think people earlier on in their career where they're just learning to do things and not having to come up with complex ways to solve complex problems, this is probably easier, right?
If you're teaching somebody how to clean a car, maybe it's just easier to give them the high level. But even so, you might want to say, "Hey, at the end of this, I want to see this car shining. I want you to feel proud of what you did. I want you to look out for the specs and to do a once over." Even in that scenario, right, giving people vision also gives them ownership and empowerment to create that vision along with you, right? To embrace that versus just telling them what to do. There needs to be a combination.
But teaching mindset and vision builds long-term success and sustainable success. It helps people to trust themselves versus just saying this is how you need to clean a car. The next one is there's a dependency trap with traditional leadership. When you don't lead with vision, you create teams that are dependent on you for every answer instead of thinking independently.
This also happens when people lead with a lot of fear. I shared this feedback with one of my leaders because he was quite scary to the people he led. And I had shared with him that they are more focused on pleasing him than doing what's right for the business, even though I knew he cared most about doing what's right for the business.
So this becomes that dependency trap when people fear you so much that they're, "I need to go check in on that person because I don't want them to yell at me." And it's also energy draining. Feeling you're constantly solving other people's problems will burn you out and holds your team back from growing. They don't feel empowered.
So if you go on vacation, they're, "We can't make these decisions without Sarah because Sarah needs to be here for all those decisions." That's not expansive leadership. It's not a good use of your time. And you could be leading at a very much more higher level, empowering your team at a higher level. And I know some people might say this feels really scary for me, but this is also really empowering for you as you embrace this as a skill set, as a leadership move for you because when you're starting to delegate, this will also become a lot easier if people understand the framework from which you come from.
So, when I first started training people, I realized for myself that telling them what to do wasn't good enough. If they didn't know why it mattered or how to think about it, they couldn't adapt when things change. They couldn't see beyond the actual problem. And so the way to really move past that is not just with instructions, but really that framework mattered most. Here's how I think about this. Here's what matters to me, particularly when it is complex situations where they are maybe having to think on their feet.
And the outcome is that people weren't just doing tasks, they were solving problems in alignment. And oftentimes, both my team members and the people that I coach would say this. What would Yann do? What would Yann say? It's almost I have imparted so much of how I think and the framework that I think in their minds that they have that to tap into to solve problems from my perspective.
And it's not to say that they don't have their own perspective because they're also interacting with that and making connections with themselves about what matters, why it matters, and what they need to protect. So it's multiplied my leadership and allowed me to trust others deeply. I even do this in childcare. When I think about training the person that's taking care of my children, I'm really talking about replicating myself. And I talk about how to prioritize things, that quality time with the kids matter more than having the house be clean. So making those decisions in the moment doesn't feel so confusing for the person. They can remember what I think is most important.
And in terms of a real life example, it's definitely when I am on vacation. So a lot of high-achieving women on vacation and really imparting what matters to your team members so that you're not always pulled in, but also that they discern and they know when to reach out to you, that they understand that there are going to be some high-stake situations that are important to reach out to you for.
So, for example, I remember I had a big trip to Patagonia. And my team member was dealing with a really big accounting issue with the accounting team. And she understood because she knew what mattered to me. And I said, "Listen, you need to keep the CEO up to date with what transpires here and how it's going to impact our numbers. And this is why it matters and here are all of the steps. And let me know if something is not going the way, it's not making progress, people are not getting answers, call me in."
And so they were able to solve a lot of the problems, but there were a lot of internal pressures as well. There was a senior leader that was very upset with my team member because she was the one messaging this. I had messaged it before, but they were really digging into it and I think the senior leader realized that this was going to look really bad for her. And so she was very emotionally upset with my leader.
And so my leader had reached out to me while I was on vacation and I definitely stepped in with other leaders to help resolve the situation, but also to have a conversation with that senior leader because she was having lots of emotions and my team member had done what she could do to move the process along, but this was a moment where this leader needed to hear from me directly. And so expansive leadership doesn't just mean that I'm never there, but I'm there when I need to be for the conversations that I need to have.
And so it allowed me to be able to go on vacation even when this big thing was going on and know that my team member was okay, that she could move things forward, but that she could also reach out to me when needed. But this is the impact of having that expansive leadership and giving that level of context. I can swoop in when I need to and my time is used valuably and my team member is also empowered to do what she needs to do to move things ahead.
There is a lot of trust that's needed to have expansive leadership, but the more you embrace this style of leading, the more you work with your team members in this way, the more you trust that they are leading with your thoughts and your visions in mind and making decisions from that standpoint, the more free you're going to feel in the future and the more set up for success they will be. And as this keeps expanding, the more things you can take on and you're not going to feel you have to be in every single room, talking to every single person because there are people on your team that have that capability.
So here are some key elements of expansive leadership that I want you to think about as you're leading and to build this skill set for yourself. You may be on this continuum. Maybe you’re like, "I already lead with vision, but there are other things that I want to do." Let me walk you through this four step process to really implement expansive leadership for yourself.
So the first one is lead with context, not control. Always provide the why and vision behind actions, not just the steps. I know sometimes when we are in this very rushing world and we're wanting to give orders quickly, we want to sometimes pass over the why and the vision. But this doesn't really set us up for success long term. So really providing that context. And over time, you're going to be able to provide that context in a quicker manner than in the beginning. So notice that as you build this skill out, it's actually going to be a lot quicker and easier for you to give them all of that context.
So first, lead with context, not control. And the next one is teach your thinking. Share the mental models and priorities you use to make decisions so that others can mirror your judgment. So oftentimes with my direct reports or even if they were senior leaders on my level, I would let them know this is my prioritization. We are focused on, for example, finalizing the forecast to get this done on time, but we also need to make sure that the messaging is aligned too.
So these are the pathways of us doing that and really sharing with them my thought process and my prioritization so that they are with me on the journey and they are not confused and they're not scared. And they are also understanding how to make judgments of their prioritizations too.
So if I had a COO who was, "We've got this big launch going on and I have forecasts due," I would give them enough context to understand the amount of time they would need to spend on this, but also what really matters in terms of their messaging and the points that they would need to do. So really teaching the way I think, the way that I expected to go to the board with our forecast and also the ask, right? Noticing those things.
The next one is empowering with a framework. Give people guiding principles, not a rulebook. For example, we prioritize customer experience above everything else, even speed. So that gives people an understanding, come back to me if there is something that is in the way of that so we can problem solve together. It is not all-or-nothing, but giving people that guiding principle allows them again to feel empowered and to understand a framework and to trust in a framework that is coming from you.
The last one is expect ownership, not just compliance. This is really where this expansive leadership really runs through and how people who worked with me really liked working with me because they said they feel empowered by me, they know that I trust them, I give them enough leeway to grow and to learn, but I give them enough guidance to help them along the way.
So you want to be a leader who's creating a culture where people feel proud to carry your vision forward because they understand it, not because they were told to do it. The people that I am teaching, I'm also getting them to buy into my vision as I'm explaining my vision to them. I'm explaining what matters. I remember I couldn't be in a meeting where it was for the women's group that I was leading, but I gave them a vision of what I saw.
I said, "I really want this to be a big event for us. I want you to work with the team to come up with really great ideas to increase the number of people registered for this event. I want this event to be something people are so excited to share with other people and that we're so proud of having this event and raising this money for charity and also letting people know how important it is to empower other women and how our group is, that's our mission. So let's make that so. Run this meeting in that way with that in mind and come back to me and let me know how it goes."
So again, I couldn't be in all the meetings. I had a whole bunch of other meetings. And I didn't allow myself to say it can't be done without me. I said it can. I just need to really explain to people why it's important and give them the ownership to hold my vision, to take it forward, and then of course to ask me questions, but not just to be a soldier, but to be a leader in it. And that's really what expansive leadership is about. It's about creating other leaders and expanding your own leadership potential, not through doing, but through your way of being and sharing what your vision is, what truly matters to you.
So, what does expansive leadership in action look like? Your team can make decisions confidently when you're away. Your brand, reputation, and leadership values stay consistent across projects even without your constant oversight. And then lastly, problems get solved faster because everyone is thinking at a higher level. And of course, the bonus, you create new leaders, not just better followers. You create people you can depend on and that they can create leadership within their teams and filter down the way that you lead to other people. So it's becomes expansive for the whole organization if you're leading in this manner.
So as a closing exercise, you can ask yourself these questions and start leading with your own vision. So firstly, ask yourself what principles do I want others to operate by even when I'm not there? This is so important. Whether you are training somebody on childcare, whether you're training somebody on as your successor, or whether you're training somebody to take over for your department once things transition, you want to ask yourself what matters most.
And the next one is how would I explain how I think about success, priorities, conflicts, or challenges? Again, this is super important because you're not just imparting what to do, you're imparting how you think about how you solve these issues and it gives them more expansive context to do it in.
And then lastly, where am I giving answers instead of teaching frameworks? So you want to notice for yourself, where am I doing that? If the problem is very straightforward and it's one and done, then you might just want to give answers. You don't need to give a whole playbook if somebody's just coming to you once trying to do something.
But if this is a relationship that's building over time, this person is working with you for a long time, they're part of your team, teaching these frameworks and putting that upfront investment in sharing the framework with them is going to be invaluable to you and it's going to save you a lot of time, money, and energy later on because then you're going to have somebody who knows how to do things aligned with the way you would do them. And that's super powerful. It empowers them as well. And it creates more sustainable growth because people want to be empowered, they want to lead more.
And one of the things that I was really proud of is that people that worked with me wanted to work with me for a long time. The retention on my team were always high because people felt they could grow with me. They felt empowered by me. And they felt they could expand their own leadership and lead in their own way without me micromanaging them.
Your challenge is to pick one situation this week where you would normally just give directions and instead teach your thinking and vision. Let people know what's important to you, why it's important to you, what would success look like? How you would deal with conflicts as they arise?
So my final thought here is that expansive leadership isn't about controlling every move. It's about multiplying your impact by creating leaders who think, act, and solve problems aligned with your vision. That's the real mark of influence. And it's how you create a leadership legacy that lasts long after you've left the room.
All right, go out there, try it on, and report back. I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to DM me via LinkedIn and let me know how expansive leadership is working out for you. All right, until next time, have a wonderful week ahead. Take good care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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