 Hi, I'm Geoff Watts and this lightbulb talk is about empowering your followers as a leader. There are many different types of leadership and it's important to pick the right style to be the leader your people need in that situation. Sometimes your people will need someone visionary to paint the picture of how the future could be and to generate enthusiasm for the journey ahead. Sometimes they'll need someone stern and decisive to steer them through a crisis or to provide corrective feedback for poor performance. Sometimes they'll need some tender loving care as they're finding their confidence developing their relationships and interactions. Sometimes they'll need you to leave from the front, role modelling both behaviour and mindset. And sometimes your people will need to spread their wings and learn to tackle things themselves. This is often the hardest leadership style to adopt because it involves letting go of control, trusting others to step up and potentially a sense of feeling not needed as much as you were. I agree with Ralph Nader who said the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. And this is critical to organisational resilience, succession planning and truly realising the potential of your people. So how can you do it? Firstly, ask for help. Identify an area of your work or business that an individual or a team could potentially take responsibility for and explicitly ask them if they would like to help you with it. Ensure this doesn't come across as an offer that they can't refuse but rather an opportunity to help. Secondly, define the goal and not the solution. Explain what outcome you're looking for and why it's important to you, but don't define how they should do it. Give them boundaries to work within and then give them the autonomy to find their own path. Thirdly, offer your support. Don't inflict it. Ask people what they need from you to be able to take this challenge on. Don't inflict your help, just offer it. Just like when a child is learning to ride a bike, they might have wobbles along the way and the temptation will be to step in and rescue them. Resist. Trust them. Even if they fall, offer help to get them back up but don't take the opportunity for them to finish the job away from them. Instead, reinforce your belief in them and help them go again. Finally, be sure not to take the credit. As Harry Truman said, it's amazing what can be achieved when you don't care who gets the credit. If you can put your ego to one side as a leader and dish out the credit elsewhere, you'll get much more proactive behavior. If you believe, like John Maxwell did, that leaders become great not because of their power but because of their ability to empower others, then try these tips. I hope this light bulb talk will help you empower your followers.