As Chapter 9 points out, “leadership is a relationship”—and helping others to collaborate is a big part of what it means to enable others to act. A specific leadership example I have observed where this was practiced was at my work during the onboarding process. The new hire was given a mentor to assist with onboarding, to ease the new worker into the environment, answer any questions he might have, and generally act as a guide and support for the new worker. One of the things the mentor did was to facilitate interaction between the new hire and help him to engage in collaborative efforts with the other workers. He did this by catching the new hire up on what the group was doing and helping to lay out parameters.
I have seen that when parameters are set, workers are much more oriented towards achieving their objectives because they know specifically what tasks are expected of them and what tasks should be left to others. The mentor did a really good job of defining parameters for the new hire and the onboarding process went really smoothly for everyone involved. The new hire was able to jump right in and we were all very quickly working well together, being on the same page and communicating in an effective way. Had the mentor not been there to facilitate the process and to enable the new hire to quickly adapt, the group likely would have struggled early on. As such, the leader was quick to show the new worker exactly what his role was, what the duties of the role were, what the rest of the group needed, and what the rest of the group would be doing. The mentor gave the new hire all the tools needed to succeed and the new hire was then trusted to use them accordingly.
References
Chapter 9. (n.d.). Digital file.
