Emancipate Your Team: Leadership Through Intent, Not Control

Empower Engineers and Leaders to Act, Own, and Thrive

Imagine this: you’re in the middle of a high-stakes incident. The platform is down, customers are affected, and the team is stuck. Not because they lack the skills, but because they’re waiting—for your decision, approval, and instructions.

That’s a leadership bottleneck. When teams rely on a single person to act, speed and innovation suffer.

Now imagine this instead: when the issue arises, an engineer steps up. They analyze the situation, propose a solution, and take action and act without waiting for permission. The team resolves the problem faster, and each challenge strengthens them.

The difference lies in a leader who leads with intent, not control, enabling the team to take ownership rather than waiting for instructions.

What happens when you shift from giving orders to granting the authority to decide? Captain David Marquet’s experience in “Turn the Ship Around!” teaches us a powerful lesson: true leadership isn’t about control but creating an environment where empowerment thrives.

As engineering leaders, this insight offers invaluable guidance for building high-performing teams.

Let’s explore how.

My Journey from Giving Orders to Giving Control

When I was first promoted to team leader, I thought my job was to make the big team decisions. I saw myself as the safety net, the person who ensured nothing went wrong.

I became the person to contact for approvals, with the final say. If a decision involved risks, the team would look to me to make the call. While it felt satisfying to be needed, I didn’t realize I was creating a bottleneck for my team.

Then came the wake-up call.

I was off when a nasty bug appeared in production. The team tried to resolve it, but nobody took the lead. Fixing the issue required deploying a risky fix—a decision they weren’t confident making without me. A missing leader paralyzed the team.

Looking back, it was clear I had prepared them to follow my lead rather than act independently. As Captain Marquet said in his book, they focused more on avoiding mistakes than driving solutions. I had unintentionally created a leader-follower structure that wasn’t scalable. I had to change how I led if I wanted a team that could thrive without me.

That was when I realized leadership wasn’t about being the person with all the answers. It was about creating a team that didn’t need me to have them.

Since then, I’ve been focusing on creating an environment where people can exercise initiative, make decisions, and take ownership of their work.

So, what does it take to build a team with a leader-leader dynamic where ownership thrives alongside guidance and vision? Let’s see it.

Intent-Based Leadership: The Shift That Changes Everything

Building a high-performing team requires a fundamental shift in how we approach leadership. It’s not about stepping back or avoiding decisions—it’s about creating an environment where your team has the confidence and clarity to act, think critically, and take ownership of outcomes. This is the essence of intent-based leadership.

At its core, Intent-Based Leadership transforms the traditional leader-follower dynamic into a leader-leader model. Instead of simply giving orders, leaders create the conditions for their team to declare what they intend to do and act confidently.

For example, instead of assigning tickets to engineers, you create an environment where engineers choose their own tasks based on their skills and strengths. For instance, an engineer might say, “I intend to take this ticket because I’m familiar with this module and can deliver it quickly.”

This subtle but powerful shift encourages team members to take initiative, align their work with their strengths, and own the outcome while keeping you informed and aligned.

Intent-based leadership doesn’t remove the leader from the equation; it amplifies their impact. As a leader, you provide the vision, context, and support, enabling your team to act autonomously and accountable.

This approach fosters a culture of ownership, trust, and continuous growth when done well. Instead of waiting for instructions, your team now shows initiative. They no longer fear mistakes—they learn and improve. Above all, they become leaders through their actions.

From Empowerment to Emancipation: Steps to Lead with Intent

Empowerment helps move beyond the top-down leader-follower model, but it often falls short of true transformation. Telling your team they’re “empowered” doesn’t equip them to make bold decisions or take ownership. Without clarity, trust, and support, empowerment can leave teams hesitant and uncertain.

To unlock your team’s full potential, you must go beyond empowerment—to emancipation. This means creating an environment where your team has the freedom, confidence, and responsibility to decide and own the outcomes, enabling them to grow into leaders. It goes beyond simple empowerment by fostering a culture where team members are genuinely autonomous yet aligned with shared goals and supported by their leader.

Here’s how to make the shift:

1. Start with Clarity

Empowerment without clarity is like giving someone the keys to a car without explaining the destination. To lead with intent, you must ensure your team understands the mission, priorities, and the “why” behind their work.

Why it works:
When your team understands the bigger picture, they can make confident decisions that align with organizational goals.

Example:
Instead of saying, “We need to improve reliability,” explain, “Our goal is to reduce downtime by 50% this quarter to improve customer retention and meet our SLA commitments. Here’s how this impacts the business.”

2. Invite Intent, Not Approval

Empowerment often falls short because teams feel they need constant permission to act. Intent-based leadership flips this dynamic by encouraging team members to declare their plans rather than seek approval.

Why it works:
This approach builds accountability and confidence while keeping you informed. It shifts the focus from “What should I do?” to “Here’s what I’m going to do.”

Example:
Old Style (Approval):
Engineer: “Can I deploy the fix now?”
Leader: “Yes, go ahead after running tests.”

New Style (Intent):
Engineer: “I intend to deploy the fix in about one hour after completing the tests.”
Leader: “Sounds good! Let me know how it goes.”

This simple shift fosters ownership and speeds up decision-making.

3. Build a Culture of Trust

True emancipation requires trust—trust that your team will make the right decisions and, more importantly, learn from their mistakes. This means letting go of micromanagement and creating space for growth.

Why it works:
Trust empowers your team to act decisively. They know they have your support, even if things fail.

Example:
I asked a junior engineer to lead the deployment during a major feature rollout. I told them, “You’ve got this. Focus on the plan we discussed, and I’m here if you need support.” There were minor hiccups, but they owned the process, resolved the issues, and successfully delivered the feature. Instead of stepping in at every bump, I allowed them to work through challenges.

The experience boosted their confidence and sent a message to the entire team: I trust you to handle critical tasks. Over time, this trust transformed into a stronger, more self-reliant team culture.

4. Normalize Mistakes as Part of Growth

Fear of failure is one of the most significant barriers to true ownership. To emancipate your team, create an environment where you view mistakes as learning opportunities, not reasons for blame.

Why it works:
Lack of punishment for risk-taking encourages your team to innovate and take initiative.

Example:
After a failed deployment, instead of focusing on the error, we held a retrospective to uncover what went wrong and how to improve. The engineer who made the call felt supported and grew more confident in handling future releases.

5. Resist the Impulse to Provide Solutions

As leaders, it can be tempting to provide answers, but doing so limits creativity, stifles ownership, and hinders your team’s critical thinking skills, making them over-rely on you. Instead, define the goal and let your team determine the best way to achieve it.

Why it works:
When team members develop their own methods, they take greater ownership of the process and outcome. This fosters creativity, builds problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and ensures they fully understand and support the solution.

Example:
When a team was struggling with deployment delays, instead of prescribing a solution, I asked, “What’s slowing us down, and how can we address it?” They analyzed the process and proposed optimizing parts of the pipeline, significantly improving efficiency.

“The problem with specifying the method along with the goal is one of diminished control. Provide your people with the objective and let them figure out the method.”

― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

The Result: A High-Performing, Emancipated Team

When you shift from control to intent and empowerment to emancipation, your team undergoes a profound transformation. This doesn’t mean stepping away as a leader—it means stepping into a role where you amplify your team’s strengths, provide clarity, and foster growth, enabling them to achieve more than they thought possible.

Here’s what a high-performing, emancipated team looks like:

1. Decisions Are Faster and Smarter

When team members can declare their intent and act decisively, delays disappear. Your team isn’t waiting for you to weigh in—they’re solving problems in real-time.

Example:
During a system outage, your engineers analyze the situation, decide on a fix, and deploy it without needing to track you down. By the time you’re informed, the issue is resolved.

Why It Matters:
Decentralizing decisions means faster recovery in emergencies and better responsiveness overall.

2. Ownership Becomes the Norm

When team members feel trusted, they take responsibility—not just for their work but for the team’s success. They stop asking, “What should I do next?” and start thinking, “What can I do to make this better?”

Example:
Your team proactively improves processes, such as streamlining deployments or implementing better monitoring systems, without waiting for direction. They see opportunities and act on them.

Why It Matters:
Ownership fosters accountability, innovation, and pride, creating a stronger and more engaged team.

3. Leaders Multiply

Intent-based leadership doesn’t just create better engineers—it also makes future leaders. As team members become comfortable making decisions, they develop the skills to lead others.

Example:
An engineer who once hesitated to speak up now leads incident response efforts confidently and mentors newer team members. They’ve become a go-to person, spreading leadership throughout the team.

Why It Matters:
You’re not just building a team for today—you’re creating a pipeline of leaders for tomorrow.

4. Your Role Evolves

Focusing on enabling rather than controlling can help you take on higher-level strategic challenges. You will spend less time putting out fires and more time building a vision for the future.

Example:
Instead of managing every task, you focus on aligning cross-functional teams, shaping long-term goals, or mentoring emerging leaders.

Why It Matters:
When your team thrives independently, you can focus on making a bigger impact as a leader.

Conclusion: Leadership That Multiplies Impact

Leadership isn’t about solving every problem or making every decision. It’s about creating an environment where your team can thrive, take ownership, and grow.

When we shift from control to intent and from empowerment to emancipation, we don’t just lead—we create teams that lead alongside us.

Intent-based leadership shows us that it isn’t about doing more but enabling more. By providing clarity, trusting your team, and treating mistakes as opportunities to learn, you can build a team that is confident, capable, and ready to take on any challenge.

Are you ready to make the shift? It starts with one slight change: inviting intent instead of seeking approval. Trust your team to take the reins and focus on building a culture where leadership happens at every level.

Leadership isn’t about letting go of responsibility but about multiplying it. Together, let’s build teams that thrive, succeed, and lead.

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