Week 3 facilitator guide: build the team (Empowerment + Buy-In)
The problem this session solves: delegation failure is the top new-manager derailer, and "I can do it faster myself" is its anthem. On the IC side, the same failure looks like a component only one person understands. Meanwhile, technically correct proposals die in both tracks because the order was reversed: idea first, person never. This session makes both failures operational. The delegation audit forces an honest list of hoarded work and names the fear behind each item. The Buy-In block turns support from charisma into a designed process: PR/FAQ, DACI, early adopters, and the managing-up tools SCQA and nemawashi. Participants leave with a real handoff candidate and a real two-sentence ask.
Pre-work to send (assigned at the close of session 2): the one-pagers for the Law of Empowerment and the Law of Buy-In, including the Grove TRM, delegation levels, PR/FAQ, DACI, SCQA, and nemawashi summaries. Ask everyone to arrive with one question the reading left them with, with last sprint fresh in mind, and with one initiative they need support on right now. Activity 2 needs a real initiative, not a hypothetical one.
Materials: slides (week-3-build-the-team.md), activity-board.html (duplicated in Canva, one frame per pair), worksheets.md (the delegation audit, the dead-proposal postmortem, the SCQA worksheet, the mentorship booking note). Zoom Pro with breakout pairs pre-assigned before the call. Confirm both teach-back pairs are present before you start; this session hosts two slots.
Run of show (120 min)
- 0:00 to 0:10, evidence round (slide "Evidence round"). 4 to 5 people, 60 seconds each, showing last week's influence map: the one broken relationship they found and the connection that is missing. Script below.
- 0:10 to 0:15, pre-read question round (slide "What question did the pre-read leave you with?"). One question each, 30 seconds. Three people stuck on the same concept means slow down there; silence means move fast.
- 0:15 to 0:24, teach Empowerment (slides "Manage by their maturity, not your comfort" and "Say the level out loud", then the bridge slide "One law, two handovers"). They read Grove already; go straight to the hard parts: TRM is per task, and it changes with every handoff. Say the bridge line out loud (talking points below).
- 0:24 to 0:28, story to land it (slide "Six promotions at once"). The six simultaneous promotions: preparing people to take power, then giving it. IC twin ready: handing over the component only you understood, and living with their first bad decision.
- 0:28 to 0:39, activity 1, delegation audit (slide "Activity 1: delegation audit"). Pairs, 11 minutes, board zones 1 and 2 plus worksheet 1. Minutes 0 to 7: list what you did last sprint that someone else could do 80 percent as well, and tag the honest reason on zone 1. Minutes 7 to 11: pick up to 3 handoff candidates and mark the person's TRM on zone 2. Mechanics below.
- 0:39 to 0:45, debrief (slide "The honest reasons, on the board"). 3 to 4 people share one item and its reason. Point at the four clusters on zone 1: job security, speed, quality, trust. Each one feels true today, each one is fatal over time.
- 0:45 to 1:00, teach-back 1 (slide "Teach-back 1"). Pair presents 8 minutes, both speak, then 7 minutes of structured discussion. Assign the roles at the top of the slot: challenger, connector, summarizer.
- 1:00 to 1:05, break (slide "Break").
- 1:05 to 1:13, teach Buy-In (slides "Your dead proposal was not rejected" and "Buy-in is a process, not charisma"). Ask them to bring one dead proposal to mind now; it becomes this week's take-home. The live question: who is the approver of your current stalled proposal? If you cannot name them, that is the finding.
- 1:13 to 1:20, universal module B, managing up (slides "Managing up: two sentences, not a deck" and "The meeting is not where decisions happen", then the bridge slide "The dead RFC and the dead reorg"). SCQA compresses the pitch; nemawashi moves the decision out of the meeting. Say the bridge line.
- 1:20 to 1:24, story to land it (slide "From 26 seconds to 4"). Selling an invasive change before the metrics existed. Point at where the buy-in work happened: none of it was in the meeting.
- 1:24 to 1:37, activity 2, write your SCQA (slide "Activity 2: write your SCQA"). Pairs, 13 minutes, board zone 3 plus worksheet 3. Pick one initiative you need support on right now and write the 2-sentence SCQA summary for your manager's manager. Partner challenge: would a busy executive keep reading after sentence one?
- 1:37 to 1:45, debrief (slide "Read your two sentences to the room"). 3 to 4 people read theirs out loud. You mark where the complication is missing or the answer is hiding. A summary that needs explaining is not done yet.
- 1:45 to 2:00, teach-back 2 plus close (slides "Teach-back 2", "Take-home: the delegation and buy-in audit", "Before next week"). The blueprint embeds the close in this slot: pair presents 8 minutes, discussion 4 minutes with the same roles rotated, then the last 3 minutes for the take-home brief, the counts-as-done rule, the week 4 pre-read, and the mentorship window announcement. Hard stop at 2:00.
Teaching talking points
- TRM is per task, not per person. A brilliant senior has low TRM the first time they lead a production incident; a mid-level engineer has high TRM on the system they have lived in for two years. Managing by the person's title instead of their task maturity is managing by your own comfort.
- The rule: low TRM gets detailed, structured oversight. Medium gets two-way coaching. High gets goals and light monitoring. Micromanaging a high-TRM person insults them; leaving a low-TRM person alone drowns them.
- TRM changes with every handoff, so you re-read it every time. The live question: whose TRM are you reading wrong right now, and in which direction?
- Delegation levels are grants, and the grant must be said out loud: "collect the data", "recommend a decision", "decide and inform me". When nobody says the level, both sides guess differently. Marquet's intent ladder is the destination: from "tell me what to do" up to "I intend to do X".
- Empowerment bridge line, spoken out loud: whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports, this law asks for the same move. ICs hand over the component only they understand; EMs hand over decisions, not just tasks. Both are TRM calls.
- The honest reasons for hoarding cluster into four fears: job security ("if they can do it, why am I here?"), speed ("faster myself"), quality ("they will do it worse"), trust. The challenge question for the audit: is the reason about the work, or about you?
- Buy-in is a designed process, not charisma. PR/FAQ makes every reviewer a part-owner of the idea (Bezos put S3 and EC2 through 10+ drafts). DACI names the approver before the debate. Rogers says win the early adopters first: the majority follows people, not arguments.
- Being right gets you a hearing. It does not win support. The dead RFC was probably not rejected; it was heard by people who had not yet accepted the messenger, and it starved.
- SCQA in two sentences: sentence 1 carries the situation and the complication, sentence 2 carries the answer, your ask. Your manager's manager gives you two sentences of attention; spend them on the complication and the answer, not the background.
- Nemawashi: walk the proposal around in private, one conversation at a time, before the meeting. If a stakeholder sees the idea for the first time in the meeting, the meeting is where it dies. Count your private conversations before your next big ask; zero is a plan to fail.
- Buy-In bridge line, spoken out loud: the IC's dead RFC and the EM's dead reorg die the same death: idea heard, person not bought. The fix is the same too: who, then why.
Evidence round script (weeks 2 to 4)
The line to open it: "Evidence round. Four to five of you share last week's artifact, 60 seconds each. Show the artifact itself, not a story about it. No artifact means not done." This week the artifact is the influence map: ask each sharer for the one broken relationship and the missing connection. Pick the sharers, keep the 60 seconds hard, and thank people for honest findings more than for flattering maps. The round is public on purpose: nobody wants to show up empty twice.
Teach-back mechanics (two slots tonight)
Each slot: the pair presents for 8 minutes, both speak, opening with the framework, then an owned story, then where the law breaks. Structured discussion follows with three audience roles you assign at the top of each slot: one challenger (must push back on something), one connector (must link it to a previously covered law), one summarizer (closes with a 30-second synthesis). Rotate the roles between slot 1 and slot 2 so six different people are active. Slot 1 gets the full 7 minutes of discussion; slot 2 gets about 4, because the close is embedded in its window. Score both pairs on the rubric during the discussion, not after the session.
Breakout mechanics (you are solo)
- Pairs are pre-assigned in Zoom before the session. Keep the same pairs for both breakouts.
- Each pair works on their own frame of the activity board. The instruction is written on every zone of the frame, so a pair that missed the spoken brief can still act.
- Activity 1: set the Zoom room timer to 11 minutes. Broadcast at 5 minutes ("you should have at least 3 stickies on zone 1 by now") and at 7 minutes ("pick your handoff candidates, mark TRM on zone 2").
- Activity 2: set the timer to 13 minutes. Broadcast at 6 minutes ("switch: partner drafts now") and at 11 minutes ("post both sentences on zone 3").
- Keep a parking-lot frame on the board for tangents. Promise them to the debrief or to the WhatsApp group, then actually follow up.
Debrief questions
- After activity 1: is the reason about the work, or about you? Which of the four fears filled up fastest on your frame? Whose TRM are you reading wrong right now, and in which direction?
- After activity 2: would a busy executive keep reading after sentence one? Where is the complication missing, and where is the answer hiding? How many private conversations have you had about this initiative so far? If the answer is zero, what does nemawashi say about your next meeting?
- During teach-back discussions, hold the roles to their jobs: the challenger must actually push back, the connector must name a specific earlier law, the summarizer gets the last 30 seconds.
Close
Embedded in the final minutes of the teach-back 2 slot; hard stop at 2:00. Assign the take-home, the delegation and buy-in audit (worksheets 1 and 2 are the templates): list 3 things you are hoarding with the honest reason for each, and postmortem one dead proposal against the who-then-why order: did they buy you, or just hear the idea? State the counts-as-done rule exactly: both lists submitted by Thursday 6:00 PM, before session 4. Reflection without the artifact counts as not done. Assign the week 4 pre-read: the one-pagers for the Law of Explosive Growth and the Law of Legacy, arrive with one question. Announce the mentorship window: it opens tonight and closes at day 30; book the 60-minute 1:1 through the Zcal link in the group (worksheet 4 has the details). Remind the session 4 teach-back pairs that their slots are next Friday. Then the forward line: tonight you built the team. Next Friday: leading leaders, and what remains when you leave.