← Build with Leila Hormozi
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What's up, guys? On this episode of Build, I want to talk about breaking through the cycle of enabling and leadership. Okay, so I'm guessing that you were listening to this and you're like, enabling, great. What is that? Enabling is really when you are not helping someone, you are enabling them, because a lot of people mix up the two. So let's talk about what it is and what it isn't. What is enabling? It is doing something for our teams that they can do for themselves, but we don't want them to because we will feel bad or they will feel bad. Helping somebody is doing something for our teams they cannot yet do for themselves. So we give them a model or it's just part of our job. Okay, so that is what enabling is and what it isn't. Helping somebody is when we do something that they cannot yet do. Enabling someone is when we do something that they can do. But maybe we're fearful that they're going to mess up, that they're going to feel bad, that they're not going to like it. And so what does that look like in the workplace? This can look like so many different things. And I'm sure you guys can resonate with some of this one. First and foremost, rescuing people from their mistakes rather than teaching them, providing them with instructions, providing them with clarity. We jump in and we just don't allow it to happen. Have you ever had a time or maybe like, you're leading a project or someone on your team's leading a project and then you start to see that things aren't going too well and you're like, ah, fuck it, I'm just going to jump in. Okay? Jumping in is enabling. You could have done other things as well. You could have provided with them with instruction. You could have asked them for if they need help. You could have provided them with just, like, a little bit of feedback. There's a lot of stuff you can do rather than just jump in and enable them to not acquire the skill. The second way this shows up is you solve every problem for your teammate rather than encouraging them to solve them for themselves and take ownership. Okay? So a lot of the times what happens is we get in this cycle, especially when we're really busy, where, like, people are bringing us problems. And what we're doing is we're just constantly solving, solving, solving, solving. But we're not teaching, we're not empowering, we're not telling people to solve them for themselves. And so what you do is you actually create this cycle where you enable people to Remain incompetent. People won't learn how to solve the problem if you're constantly the one doing it. And if you don't present the opportunity to them, then they're never going to learn. And then lastly, I would say this is probably the most common, is that you avoid holding people accountable because of fear of confrontation or wanting to be seen as the good boss. Right? Can you think of some people on your team that you do enable them because of fear of making them uncomfortable, fear of them complaining, fear of them not liking what you asked them to do? I'm sure that you can think of this, especially if you're somebody who cares a lot, which, if you listen to my podcast, you probably do. This is very common to see in the workplace. And here's the thing. Enabling always feels like we're being the good guy. It feels like we're doing the right thing, but in reality, you're being the fucking bad guy. This is a wake up call for any of you guys that are enabling your teams, which is you are creating an environment that is not sustainable. You are creating an environment where they are going to resent you for not teaching them right, not loving them up. And you are eventually going to resent them because it's going to become such a burden to continue to enable them. It's going to take up all your time. If you can't drive things forward right now because you're so busy enabling your team and preventing them from experiencing the consequences of their inadequacy, their lack of performance, or their lack of adherence to something, I want you to understand that you are setting them up for failure. Guys, the reason I'm so passionate about this is because, oh, I didn't realize in the beginning when I first started a company, how much I did it. And I did it because I thought I was helping people. I thought I was really caring about them. I thought I was, you know, preventing them from experiencing the pain that I ever felt. And you know, what I've realized is that if you don't let people experience some of these things, they're never going to change and they're definitely not going to become as good as you. So if you really want to help people, you. You go from enabling them to empowering them. And you cannot empower people while you're enabling people. It is impossible. Here's the thing, these behaviors always feel good in the short term, right? Because it's like we're keeping in the coziness. Like, we're remaining in this, like, cozy, safe Place where, like, everyone is relying on you. You're enabling everybody. Everybody's happy and comfortable. If you relate to that right now. And you're like, yes, my team feels happy and comfortable, guys, we are doing it wrong. I have been there. And if you are not the source of change, to enact some uncertainty, some discomfort, some challenge, I promise you, somebody else will. And so what you want to do is go from enabling to helping, to go from enabling to empowering, and to go from enabling people to holding people accountable. It's funny because the first time I actually learned this concept, it was not within business at all. Hmm. It was actually my mother who was an alcoholic. I remember the first time that I heard the term. And it was actually I was in Children of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was talking with the facilitator, and the facilitator was speaking with a girl who. Her mom was not just an alcoholic, but she was also addicted to heroin. And he was talking to her and he was saying, well, how are you doing with your mother? And she was saying, I was driving my mom yesterday because she was really high and she was really drunk and something, something. And I remember he stopped her and he was like, you are enabling her. And then she was like, well, what is enabling? And he explained, he was like, enabling is when you don't allow your mother to deal with the consequences of her own actions. And she was like, but I love her and I don't want her to get hurt. And he said, love doesn't mean enabling someone's self destructive behavior. Sometimes it means you step aside and allow them to experience the consequence. Man, that changed my life. Because I remember listening and I was like, shit, I'm pouring out all of her alcohol. I'm helping her when she's sick. I'm calling the ambulance when she drinks too much. I'm making up stories to my dad and to the neighbors. I'm learning how to drive a car so I can drive her places. I mean, like, it was the whole kitchen sink. I was thrown at this. And I was just completely enabling her and preventing her from experiencing the consequences of her own actions. And it was in that moment that I decided I was like, I. I will not do this anymore. And, you know, part of it was because I felt so, so miserable. I was so miserable. I was so resentful. I was so anxious all the time because I was enabling her. And what I did is I actually moved out of the house. I said, I can't be here anymore. You know, my parents had divorced and that had led to a lot of this. But I said, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I'm preventing her from really seeing the consequences of her actions. And I'm also living a miserable life. Everything relies on me. I feel like if I'm not here, she's going to die, right? She's going to end up killing herself. Something terrible is going to happen. I can't live my life this way. I can't live another five years doing this. And so I moved out and it was very hard and it felt awful in the short term and she definitely tried to get me to go back. But you know what? You know what I got to let go of is I got to let go of resentment, I got to let go of anger. I got to let go of having my entire life consumed by this other person's deficits, inadequacies and problems. It's so funny because how this shows up in the workplace is not as serious, but kind of the same. Which is like if you look at bosses and managers who enable people, they are full of anxiety, of resentment, of feeling like there's a burden. And so because of that, they are constantly feeling overburdened, they're spinning their wheels and they're getting nowhere and they're so distracted. They're distracted from creating a high performance team because they're so focused on just picking up for their team's deficits. And so that's really the cost of enabling, right? It's feeling burnt out. Like leaders feel like they're constantly overwhelmed, burnt out, anxious because they're putting out fires and problems for their teams. On the other side of that, you reduce innovation because when people are enabled, not empowered, they don't take risks, they're not creative, and you don't get any innovation out of the department. And the last one is that when you enable people, you remove any sort of accountability, which means that that department plateaus. And because of that, people avoid responsibility. So it's like you train them to avoid responsibility and then you're mad when you're like trying to put it back on them and they're like, I don't want that shit. And you're like, what? I promise you, people will put up a tantrum, they will put up a fight to make sure that you don't put that responsibility back on them. All in all, enabling might feel like the right thing to do in the moment, but it erodes long term trust, growth and performance. And not only that, but it creates like a two way street of resentment because you resent them because you spend all of your time blocking them from the consequences of their actions. And they resent you because they feel like they're not growing. And it's this like weird, messed up cycle that people create. The irony of it is that most of the time, it's the leaders who care the most that create these situations. And again, I'm telling you guys this because in my first business, I did this without even knowing. You know, it was really scope creep. I thought I was helping people. And then I realized, I remember the moment, it was actually my media leader and I was helping him with something. And then I realized I was like, oh, I'm spending 50% of my week doing his job. I have completely enabled this person. And it sucked because as soon as I realized I was like, okay, I gotta pull back. And so I pulled back and I was like, all right, I'm not going to do this. And man, did he put up a fight. He was not happy about it. He was like, I thought you were going to do this. I'm like, nope, here's all the things that you're going to do now because I've been doing part of your job. And I was really upfront about it because once I realized I was doing it, I was like, oh yeah, hell no, I can't do this. I'm going to go into the zone of resentment. Nobody wants to be in the zone of resentment. I pulled back and pretty much the whole department had like an uprising. As soon as I showed him that I would no longer enable him, he started showing people he would no longer enable them. I think we had like half the team quit, turn over, had to let them go, because it was just like complete change in terms of how we held people accountable and the standards that we held people to. And the thing is that when you enable people what it feels like, right? And I want you guys to identify this for yourselves. It's a very comfortable feeling. It's like everyone's happy, everyone likes everything. Everyone is not being challenged, they're not being held accountable, they're not being pushed. It's a lot of feel good today. You're just setting yourself up to feel really shitty in the future. And so that's the irony of it is like, it's the people who often care the most that enable the most. And because of that, they basically trade having a long term functioning department for having a short term fake department. And so if you identify with that, which a lot of people can, a lot of people fall into this trap. Here's how you can move from enabling people to empowering people. The first one is that you ask before you tell. Instead of just giving your answer to your team, ask them before you give them the answer. The easiest one that I've done this with is anytime that I have new administrative staff, EAs, et cetera is at first I'm telling them what to do because I'm giving them instructions. But as soon as I know that they have a frame, I start changing it. They bring me something and they say, okay, what would you like on this? I say, well, what do you think? What do you think I would like? I start putting the questions back on them. And so I'm training them how to think through situations and then I'll work through it with them. But I'm going to try and put every decision back on them. Everything they bring to me. I'm like, well, which one would you pick? What would you do? What do you think I would do here if I wasn't here? What would you do if you only had five minutes to make the decision, what would you do? Constantly putting it back on them. What you can do that I did with a few of my teams in my first company is I called it the question answer framework. Which is just if you come to me with a question, you also must present an answer. It's as simple as that. I would have that in their end of week reports, I would have that in our one on ones and I would ask them to slack me with that format, which is anytime you have a question, I also want you to present an answer. And what that does is it builds problem solving muscles and confidence because then they start to realize that they are capable of so much more than they thought they were. The second thing that you do is you want to delegate, but you don't want to abdicate. So a lot of people, what they do is as soon as they hear this like, oh shit, I need to be delegating more. I'm doing like 20, 30% of someone's job. Yes, we want to delegate more, but it's not just about handing off tasks. You need to help set people up for success. Otherwise the business and your customers will pay for the incompetence of the people. And so explaining the why behind tasks and projects, giving context and also giving people short Runway to experiment with solutions. A lot of times what people do as soon as they realize they've created this lack of accountability and these teams are dependent on them, is they just abdicate everything. They're like, oh, shit, this is all yours now. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. We're not trying to get people to fail, we're trying to get people to succeed. Let's just do this the right way. It's not about giving them everything and going completely hands off. It's about giving them context and giving them frames to think with so they can start to make those decisions for themselves. And so it's about delegating, not abdicating. The third thing that you can do is set expectations, make it clear to your team what they are responsible for and what your role is in interacting with them. When roles are defined, people can identify where they need to step up and you can identify where you don't and where you do step in. When I identified that I had been enabling my leadership team in gymlaunch, I remember I put together a presentation and I had me. It looked like a little org chart with stick figures. And I had me at the top and I had them and there's a big space in between. And what I said is, I've been enabling, I have been jumping in, I have been the glue. I'm going to step back so that you can step up. And it was the coolest thing, because, one, being transparent with your team is important. Telling them that you've been enabling them, there's nothing wrong with doing that. Is it for every team? No. There's some teams that maybe you don't want to say and use those terms, but explain to them that you've been jumping in too much, you've been doing too much of their job and that you're going to take a step back. That's just good communication. And so when I did that, the coolest thing was that about half the team stepped up to fill that gap. They were like, layla, we've got this. You don't need to keep jumping in. And then what I saw is that there were some teammates that didn't, and it didn't necessarily work out for everybody. But at least I knew, and at least I knew quickly, because the thing is, is if you never step back to see if your team will step up, you just keep the wrong people longer. And ironically, you keep the wrong people longer and you probably push away the good ones. And so setting clear expectations with your team and explaining where the boundaries lie of, like, what your job is and what their job is, it's just good communication. And then the last thing that you can do when you are looking to go from enabling people to empowering people is you want to introduce accountability. Okay, what is accountability not? Accountability is not about punishing somebody. Accountability is about growth. Accountability is talking about what we could do differently next time, not what we did wrong this time. And then it is empowering somebody to take corrective action. Okay, so accountability is having a conversation about what someone can do different next time in the future. Accountability is not criticizing and punishing somebody for what went wrong in the past. It's looking at a situation where something went wrong and saying, great, next time, let's do this instead. Does that make sense? How can I help? How can I support and then allowing them to do it differently. I think the reason that a lot of people don't hold teams accountable is they think that holding someone accountable is yelling at them. Holding someone accountable is telling them that they suck. It's like, no, if you do that, they're just gonna keep sucking more. Holding someone accountable is giving them a future frame to tackle the same problem with in a different way so they could be more successful this time. If you are a leader who feels like, wow, this resonates with me, I do enable my team, I want you to remember, there's no better time to change than now. If you're gonna do it eventually, you might as well do it now because it's only gonna be more painful with waiting. And again, you cannot empower your team until you stop enabling your team. Short term discomfort, long term dysfunction. If you are looking to make that change, remember, ask before you tell delegate, don't abdicate. Set clear expectations and introduce accountability to your teams. With that, I hope you guys have a great Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday afternoon walk, workout, whatever it might be. And I will see you on the next one.