© 2025 James Hardie – Course Correction Consulting Ltd. The EASE Framework™ is a proprietary model developed by James Hardie to support the creation of psychologically safe, empowered, and strategically aligned teams. All rights reserved.
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In leadership, there is often a temptation to hold on tightly, especially when things are uncertain or money and reputation is at stake. As a founder or other leader of a growing business, I know this is a real challenge.
"Mastering the Art of Leading with EASE" delves deep into the strategies and mindset shifts you need to realign your goals and reclaim your growth path, with EASE. This week, we explore the final principle of the EASE Framework: Empower, and why effective leadership requires trust, delegation, and the courage to empower others to lead.
Some say leadership a lonely business, and yet as any pilot will know one of the first instructed elements is the critical formality of handover of control so that you can learn to fly:
"You have control," says the Instructor, and there you are about to take control of an aeroplane.
"I have control," says the student, with perhaps some excitement or trepidation, completing the formalities. Your job now is to demonstrate your growing competency and understanding the manouevres required, to learn in an environment while also being observed and coached.
This delegation of control is not done without preparation, briefings, and demonstration of what is required. Later on in a career the transactive knowledge between pilots enables transfer of control and aircraft management in more and more complex situations with ease. But it all starts with that first bit of Trust.
In leadership, there is often a temptation to hold on tightly, especially when things are uncertain or money and reputation is at stake. As a founder or other leader of a growing business, I know this is a real challenge.
Your investment and success has begun but can now only truly be realised in a scaleable way as you hand over more and more of your business activities to the competence of others. Realising true leadership is not about having all the answers or controlling every output and potential outcome or upset.
It is about building systems, people, and practices that can operate without you at the centre of every decision.
To empower is not to withdraw. It is to equip, trust, and step aside with intent. The paradox of power and control is that the more you can learn to give it away the more it grows.
Your delegation is often misunderstood. It is not about offloading work. It is not about accepting diminishing standards. It is about distributing leadership in a way that grows competence, confidence, and ownership.
Done well, it builds speed, agility, and resilience. However, if done poorly, it creates confusion, frustration, and failure.
“Grasp beyond the reach of others by reaching beyond your apparent grasp, and asking others to do the same, with your support.”
This is the gift of empowerment. It is strategic generosity, a clear choice, and a long-term investment in scaleable capability. Each of us is governed by our finite resources of time and experience, but this can all be enhanced by increasing our resources to meet their job demands and by empowering others.
You may know better than them what they are truly capable of, your belief and trust in them may be the most important thing you can demonstrate.
Empowerment requires two conditions, brilliantly explained by David Marquet in Turn the Ship Around, where he learned that he did not know and could not know enough to be a "know all tell all" Captain of the submarine. The epiphany was that he did not need to know all, he might need to know who did know different things:
If either is missing, the risk is too high or the delegation is unfair.
When people are clear about what success looks like, and confident that they can deliver, they begin to act with autonomy. From this self-efficacy flows a virtuous circle of self determination, capturing purpose and true mastery as recognised in the research work of psychologists like Bandura, Deci and Ryan.
In aviation and in high-reliability environments, we speak about “brief and debrief”. This is how clarity and feedback are embedded. Trust is earned not just through words, but through reflecting on the actual events and what was learned.
Here are three tested tools and principles for developing empowered, accountable teams:
A tool for shifting ownership of thinking. Instead of telling people what to do, invite them to tell you what they see, intend, or recommend. Progression of their confidence in their actions might sound like: “I think we should…” → “I intend to…” → “I did this because…”
This builds decision-making muscle.
Always match the task to the person’s authority. You might define levels like:
• Separate the Problem from any Solution Discussions
• Observe and Define the Problem
• Gain some consensus from others if possible
• Orientate and Consider at least three possible Solutions to avoid biased or binary framing
• Consider risks and the worst case or bad outcomes using “What if… and then What?”
• Decision. Make one!
• Action - Do Something, Defer to a later time, Delegate to someone else, Ditch it and move on.
Ambiguity is the enemy of empowerment and accountability will still remain with you even as you pass over critical areas of responsibility within the competence of others.
People do not usually set out to fail but if the situation is not psychologically safe then they may set out with failure in mind instead of speaking up.
Have you ever heard someone say, after some failure, "Yeah but I thought..." Remembering that "I think..." might actually mean "I don't know..." you might also ask, "What made you think that?"
Create a safe space for mistakes to be admitted and resolved, especially early on. If you have done a good exercise in planning and strategising then you will have considered other options and potential pivots.
Empowerment does not mean risk-free work, it means having recovery strategies, shared learning, and ongoing feedback loops already in place.
Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act.
Trust is not the absence of failure. It is the presence of resilient recovery and a continuous learning dialogue.
Choose one task or decision this week that you typically handle. Ask yourself:
"Delegate to where the information is." David Marquet
Then invite someone to take it on. Observe what they need, what they bring, and what you learn. They may have a different plan, it may be a better plan or it may be different and still good enough. The value of them learning to lead will pay dividends.
I do not come up with all of this myself, some people who have influenced my thoughts in this post include:
True empowerment is not letting go of your standards, it is sharing them with others with clarity and expectation. It is also letting go of your myth of having absolute control.
We do not really have absolute control of anything much, but we might approach it while raising the standard of collective ownership in our organisations and our decision making processes, our feedback and our won accountability.
This is how leadership scales beyond one individual. It is how you create a team that can lead with EASE.
If this sparked a shift in how you see delegation or trust, please share or tag someone growing a leadership culture. The mark of leadership is not how much of it you do, it is how many others you help to become capable and confident in what they do.
I am keen to help people succeed, t learn how to Lead with EASE. Follow this newsletter to receive the next one:
Proactive, Not Perfect: How to Lead When the Plan Falls Apart
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