Turn the Ship Around

Picture this: you're leading a team where people constantly wait for your approval before making even the smallest decisions. Every meeting ends with you assigning tasks while others nod passively. Sound familiar? This scenario plays out in countless organizations worldwide, creating bottlenecks, stifling creativity, and exhausting leaders who feel compelled to micromanage every detail.

The traditional leadership model teaches us to be the hero at the top, making all the critical decisions while others follow orders. But what if this approach is fundamentally flawed? What if the most effective leaders are those who create more leaders, not more followers? This transformative approach challenges everything we've been taught about leadership, offering a revolutionary path from the conventional leader-follower dynamic to something far more powerful: leader-leader. When every person in your organization thinks and acts like a leader, extraordinary results become not just possible, but inevitable.

The foundation of transformative leadership lies in a counterintuitive principle: true power comes from giving power away. Most leaders instinctively hold onto control, believing that their oversight ensures quality and prevents mistakes. This mindset creates organizations filled with passive followers waiting for direction, while leaders burn out trying to manage everything themselves.

Consider the story of Captain David Marquet aboard the USS Santa Fe, one of the worst-performing submarines in the fleet. Instead of tightening control as most leaders would, Marquet made a radical decision. He gathered his chiefs and asked a simple question: "Do you want to run this ship?" When they said yes, he immediately changed a single word in the ship's regulations, transferring authority for enlisted personnel leave approval from officers to the senior enlisted chief. This one-word change meant chiefs now controlled their men's schedules, qualification programs, and overall development.

The transformation was immediate. Chiefs who had previously acted as privileged middle managers suddenly became accountable leaders. They started working harder, thinking strategically, and taking ownership of outcomes. Within months, the submarine's performance soared from worst to first in the fleet. The key insight: changing who makes decisions changes how people think and act.

To implement this approach, start by identifying your organization's "genetic code" for control. Look at your policy documents and find where decision-making authority is specified. Choose decisions that could be pushed to the next level down, then draft new language transferring that authority. Begin with low-risk decisions and gradually expand as competence grows. Remember, people will rise to meet the expectations you set through the authority you give them.

The magic happens when you realize that distributing control doesn't mean losing control. Instead, you multiply your organization's capacity for intelligent action while developing the next generation of leaders who can think and act independently.

Giving people control without ensuring they have the competence to handle it leads to chaos. The second pillar of effective leadership involves building deep, practical competence throughout your organization. This means moving beyond superficial training to creating genuine expertise and judgment at every level.

The concept of deliberate action emerged from a critical incident on the Santa Fe. When a sailor accidentally moved a safety tag while performing routine maintenance, the typical response would have been punishment and more supervision. Instead, Marquet and his team spent eight hours analyzing the root cause. They discovered that mistakes happen not from lack of knowledge, but from automatic, unconscious actions. Their solution was elegant: before touching any equipment, operators must pause, vocalize their intention, and deliberately perform the action.

This deliberate action protocol had three powerful effects. First, it virtually eliminated automatic mistakes because the pause engaged conscious thought. Second, it allowed team members to catch and prevent each other's errors before they occurred. Third, it created a culture where people thought carefully about their actions rather than rushing through tasks. The result was a dramatic reduction in errors and accidents, even during high-pressure situations.

Building competence requires shifting from passive briefings to active certifications. Instead of having one person read procedures to a group, require every team member to demonstrate their knowledge through questioning. Make preparation the responsibility of participants, not just the briefer. Create consequences for unpreparedness, including the willingness to delay operations if the team isn't ready.

When people know they'll be tested on their knowledge and held accountable for their performance, they naturally invest more in learning and preparation. This creates an upward spiral of competence that enables greater autonomy and better decision-making throughout your organization.

The third essential element of leader-leader organizations is crystal-clear organizational clarity. When people understand not just what to do but why they're doing it, they can make intelligent decisions that align with the organization's goals, even in novel situations you never anticipated.

On the Santa Fe, this clarity came through developing guiding principles that served as decision-making criteria. Instead of prescriptive rules for every situation, the crew created principles like "Initiative," "Courage," and "Continuous Improvement." These weren't empty wall decorations but practical tools. When facing difficult choices, crew members could ask themselves: "Which option better demonstrates initiative? Which choice requires more courage? How can we improve from this experience?"

The power of clear principles became evident during a complex resupply operation in the dangerous Strait of Hormuz. When the submarine needed hydraulic oil to continue its mission, a junior ensign suggested requesting supplies from a nearby Navy ship, even though this wasn't in any manual or procedure. Because the crew understood their mission and had internalized principles of initiative and excellence, they quickly coordinated an impromptu resupply that kept them operational.

To create effective clarity in your organization, involve your people in developing guiding principles rather than imposing them from above. Ask teams what principles would help them make better decisions in ambiguous situations. Keep the list short and memorable. Most importantly, use these principles consistently in performance evaluations, recognition programs, and daily conversations.

The goal is to create a shared mental model that guides behavior when you're not present. When everyone understands the "why" behind their work and has clear principles for making decisions, your organization becomes remarkably resilient and adaptive to changing circumstances.

True organizational transformation goes beyond empowerment to what might be called emancipation. While empowerment implies that leaders give power to others, emancipation recognizes that people already possess tremendous capability, creativity, and drive. Your role as a leader is to remove the barriers that prevent these natural talents from emerging.

The ultimate test of this approach came when the Santa Fe faced a potential emergency during a SEAL team extraction. As the submarine waited in shallow, dangerous waters for special operations forces to return from their mission, sonar detected the ocean floor was closer than expected. In the dark control room, the young quartermaster had to choose between following the captain's instinctive but incorrect order or speaking up with the right solution. "No, Captain, you're wrong," he said respectfully but firmly. This moment of courage potentially prevented a serious accident and ensured the mission's success.

This wasn't insubordination; it was the natural result of creating a culture where people at every level think like leaders. When you consistently demonstrate that you value competence over hierarchy, people will speak up when it matters most. The sailor's willingness to correct his captain came from months of experiencing a leader who admitted mistakes, asked for input, and rewarded good thinking regardless of rank.

Building such teams requires patience and consistency. Begin by publicly admitting your own mistakes and uncertainties. Ask questions you don't know the answers to. When team members make good decisions, recognize their thinking process, not just the results. Most importantly, resist the temptation to jump in with solutions when your people are working through problems themselves.

The payoff is extraordinary: organizations that continue performing at high levels long after the original leader departs, teams that adapt quickly to unexpected challenges, and individuals who grow into leaders themselves, multiplying your impact far beyond what any single person could achieve.

The journey from leader-follower to leader-leader represents one of the most profound shifts available to modern organizations. By distributing control, building genuine competence, and creating crystal-clear organizational purpose, leaders can unleash the full intellectual and creative capacity of their people. As the transformation of the Santa Fe proved, "Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves."

This approach requires courage because it means giving up the comfortable illusion of control in exchange for something far more powerful: an organization full of thinking, committed, capable leaders at every level. The path forward is clear: start today by identifying one decision you can push down to your team, invest seriously in building their competence to handle that decision well, and ensure they understand how their choices connect to your organization's larger purpose. The extraordinary results will follow naturally from treating people like the leaders they're capable of becoming.