Before a person can take any action to lead their followers, they must be able to
recognize approximately where their followers are in the developmental cycle. To do
this, he or she must watch closely the actions of his or her followers and determine to
what degree their actions are being influenced dominantly by either confidence or
competence.
Once the leader knows the point of confidence vs. competence in his or her followers, he
or she will know which factor to build on. When the leader feels they have successfully
motivated their followers to be both very confident and competent, and that the followers
are ready and have the responsibility to lead themselves to their goal, then they know
that at that point, the followers are ready to accept some leadership themselves.
Once the followers are ready for some leadership of their own, the next problem at hand
becomes how to go about empowering them with the leadership responsibilities. Needless
to say, the leader cannot simply step away and allow the responsibility to dump onto the
followers; surely if that happened, they would quickly lose confidence and possibly
competence too. Instead, the leadership and responsibility of the followers should be
increased gradually as they are steadily empowered, and at a rate that depends on how
well the newly gained leadership is handled.
At all times though, the leader must be prepared to guide or even realign the direction
the newly independent followers take. The leader must also realize the risk of failure
in the complete empowerment of his or her followers, as starting over completely is
hardly possible. Were that to occur, the subject would near definitely experience a
severe loss of confidence as a major consequence to a premature empowerment situation.
And lastly, if a leader is completely successful in empowering his or her subjects and
has sent them well off on their way to their ultimate goal, the leader must realize that
he/she has completed his or her own goal, and is no longer needed as holder of the leader
position. Most likely, they must resign (or retire, which ever term better applies to the
situation). By resignation meaning moving on to the next situation to start anew, the
cycle continuing.
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