The short of it
By enabling others we can get to do more of what we value, and those that we enable are given a oppurtunity to grow.
How enabling helps
- You lift motivation of those you enable, giving them autonomy, and a oppurtunity to master a new task
- You create time for yourself to work on tasks, giving yourself the oppurtunity to master tasks that are more purposeful to you
- In a team context you are building the overall capability of your team, leading to a great throughput
- In a business context, this will lead to greater client statisfaction, and more oppurtunites
All of this will leading to a greater level of craftsmanship.
An Example
Say you are a lead developer and you have other developers on your team. You can enable them by:
- Giving them principles and guidelines to follow so they can:
- perform each others code reviews,
- and know when to raise items that need discussion
- Show them how to prepare for a release, and run the deployment pipeline
This then free’s yourself to focus on the business and technical challanges that the product/project faces.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a mand how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
~ Lao Tzu