”They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”

”They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”
(Braveheart, 1995)

Freedom is one of those things that means more to people than they even know.  We have heard the term micro-managing in the leadership circles many many times, but ultimately, micromanaging should be called smothering.  Look at the movie Braveheart.  Control can only lead to an uprising, war and group moon-ings. Micromanaging is really just enabling your team to do the bare minimum. It gives no freedom to fly, to be creative, to think outside the box.  Employees need to feel trusted and empowered.  I’m not talking about completely backing off so that employees have no idea what to do – I’m talking about giving people a job to do and the freedom to do it.  

Empowering your employees to have ideas, to truly THINK for themselves, to fight for the company based on want, rather than just avoiding hearing about it – that is how we create more leaders.  And isn’t that really the purpose of a leader?

Although the movie Braveheart isn’t exactly 100% accurate, it still gets the point across.  By taking away ones freedom, you are really taking away a part of them.  And if you want to create and empowering and loyal environment at your company, your employees need a little freedom. If not, you could have an uprising. Sure, you probably wont have the same uprising that the English did. There probably wont be a 6’7 man that waves a 1.6m broadsword at you. But the business equivalent. You will lose people, ideas and loyalty.