Josh's Weekly Insights- April 8, 2026

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

In class this week, we discussed the ability to empower your team. Part of that empowerment is knowing when you allow them to make decisions that the team will make mistakes at some point. However, if you immediately jump to phrases like, “Why did you do that?” or “What were you thinking?” You are shutting down your team's desire to make decisions.

So many leaders say they are empowering their teams, but do not create the space for true freedom. Making mistakes is part of the growth process and you don’t learn new skill sets without failing a bit along the way. 

So, what is freedom? To me, it is having space to make decisions (whether right or wrong), while allowing for the space to learn from the results. This fosters curiosity and resilience within your teams.

However, I will also want to be clear in that I don’t think leaders should allow for complete and utter freedom within their teams. There should be limits on decisions team members are making until they have a proven track record. This is why in banking; checks over a certain amount need to be approved by someone with more experience/knowledge. We don’t want someone brand new on the job making multimillion dollar decisions with no oversight. I can think back to a time early in my career where there was a request to move a large sum of money like that via wire transfer. I put all the information in to process it and within about 30 minutes, I received a polite phone call from our CFO to ask me about it.

It is important for leaders to understand how to create environments that allow for freedom and empowerment while also setting appropriate guardrails early on.

How do you empower your team but still support them on big decisions?

Now get out there and crush your week!