âThe problem with empowerment is that it assumes the leader has the power and graciously gives it away. What Iâm talking about is fundamentally different. Itâs about recognizing that the power was always there, in the people, and the leaderâs job is to release it.â â L. David Marquet
Pushing authority down the chain of command sounds simple in theory. In practice, it requires leaders to fight against their deepest instincts. Marquet discovered that the most difficult part of the leader-leader transformation was not convincing the crew to step up. It was convincing himself to step back.
Every time a problem arose, Marquetâs instinct was to solve it. He knew the answer, or at least he thought he did. He could see the solution clearly. It would be faster, easier, and less risky to just tell people what to do. And every time he gave in to that urge, he reinforced the very culture he was trying to change.
There is a cruel paradox at the heart of traditional leadership: the more competent and helpful the leader, the more dependent and passive the team becomes. When leaders consistently provide solutions:
The most dangerous leaders are not the incompetent ones. They are the brilliant, well-intentioned ones who solve every problem and thereby prevent anyone else from learning to solve problems.
Marquet draws a critical distinction between empowerment and what he actually did on the Santa Fe. Empowerment, as commonly practiced, is a leader-follower concept. The leader has power and generously delegates some of it to subordinates, who exercise it at the leaderâs pleasure and can have it revoked at any time.
What Marquet advocated is structurally different. It is not empowerment. It is control. The people doing the work have inherent authority over their work. The leaderâs job is not to give them power but to stop taking it away.
| Empowerment (Leader-Follower) | Control (Leader-Leader) |
|---|---|
| Leader grants authority | Authority is inherent in the role |
| Can be revoked at any time | Structurally embedded |
| Feels like a gift | Feels like a right |
| Leader retains ultimate decision-making | Decision-making is distributed |
| Requires the leaderâs continued good will | Operates independently of individual leaders |
| Temporary program | Permanent structure |
âDonât empower your people. Give them control. Thereâs a huge difference.â â L. David Marquet
Marquet did not rely on willpower alone to resist his urge to provide solutions. He built specific mechanisms into the daily operation of the submarine that made it structurally difficult for him to revert to old habits.
Instead of waiting for problems to escalate and then swooping in with a solution, Marquet instituted brief, frequent check-ins where officers would share their thinking early. These were not status updates or permission requests. They were thinking-out-loud sessions where the officer would share their analysis and intended course of action, and Marquet would ask probing questions rather than providing answers.
The key questions Marquet learned to ask:
Marquet encouraged everyone on the submarine to verbalize their thinking process before taking action. This served two purposes: it gave others the opportunity to catch errors, and it forced the person to organize their thoughts clearly. On a submarine, this practice could literally save lives.
A helmsman might say: âI am checking the depth gauge. We are at 400 feet. Our ordered depth is 200 feet. I am going to bring the ship up at a two-degree up angle.â Anyone hearing this who noticed an error could speak up before action was taken.
This mechanism required every crew member to pause briefly before taking any action, gesture toward what they were about to do, and state their intent. It was a physical practice, not just a verbal one. The pause created a moment of reflection that caught errors before they happened.
This was not about slowing things down. It was about being intentional. Paradoxically, deliberate action often increased speed because it reduced the time spent fixing mistakes.
The real test of Marquetâs commitment to resisting the urge came during high-pressure situations. When the submarine was in a drill or a real operational scenario, the temptation to take control was overwhelming. Every instinct screamed: âJust tell them what to do!â
During one particularly intense tactical exercise, Marquet watched as his officer of the deck struggled with a complex decision. The clock was ticking. The pressure was enormous. Marquet knew exactly what order to give. Every fiber of his being wanted to say it.
Instead, he asked: âWhat do you intend to do?â
The officer paused, thought, and then laid out a plan that was different from what Marquet would have ordered, but was sound and well-reasoned. It worked. And more importantly, the officer learned something that day that he could never have learned if Marquet had provided the answer: he learned that he was capable of making good decisions under pressure.
Had Marquet intervened, the outcome might have been slightly better in that moment. But the officer would have learned that he could not be trusted to make decisions when it mattered. That lesson would have been far more costly in the long run.
When leaders stop providing solutions, something counterintuitive happens: the organizationâs total problem-solving capacity increases dramatically. Instead of one brain (the leaderâs) working on problems, every brain in the organization is engaged.
On a submarine with 135 crew members:
This is not a small difference. It is an exponential improvement. And it explains why the Santa Feâs performance improved so dramatically: Marquet did not become a better leader in the traditional sense. He unlocked the leadership capacity that had always existed in his crew but had been suppressed by the system.
For the next 24 hours, try this experiment:
What would happen in your organization if you simply stopped providing solutions for one week? Would things fall apart, or would people rise to fill the vacuum? The answer to that question tells you everything about whether you are leading leaders or leading followers.