Marcel Schwantes: Building a Culture of Shared Leadership

Episode recap: 

Marcel explored the servant leadership principles and practices of shared leadership and decision. He presented a case study about former U.S. Navy Captain David Marquet's successful transformation of a submarine crew by shifting to a leader-leader model that empowered team members to make decisions. Marcel emphasized the importance of competence and clarity when sharing leadership, while challenging the audience to consider how they can empower others to lead and offered follow-up discussions. 

To  dig deeper into a strategy-based discussion about shared leadership, book your free, 30-minute discovery call with Marcel here: 

https://calendly.com/marcelschwantes/discovery-call?month=2025-08 

Bio:

Marcel Schwantes is a speaker, author, and acclaimed executive coach with a global following. Marcel delivers presentations, workshops, courses, and coaching programs about the human side of business and how cultures of care, connection, and belonging power companies to thrive and outperform the competition.

Quotes: 

• "Leaders sometimes push people like cattle, and a lot of companies still operate this way, right? But if you think about it, cattle have no say. They're herded in one direction, pushed to where the cattle rancher wants them to go. And honestly, that's not very empowering." 
• "When you share leadership, you're not losing control. You're actually multiplying it. You're creating leaders at every level, and when people feel ownership, engagement and performance will go through the roof for you." 
• "That's the power of releasing control—it turns employees into owners, and owners don't need to be driven. They lead themselves."

Key Takeaways:

• Ask “What would you do?” instead of issuing commands to invite insight and autonomy.
• Make your strategy meetings collaborative—let team members help shape direction.
• Identify areas in your org chart where decision-making can move closer to frontline work.
• Delegate leadership intentionally—challenge yourself to let one team member lead this week.

Episode Highlights:

• [00:00] Welcome and Introduction
• [02:22] Why Driving Results Isn’t Real Leadership
• [04:12] Sharing Power with Intention
• [06:40] Leading Without Pulling Rank
• [08:19] How Pushing Authority Down Unlocks Performance
• [10:41] Why Clarity Must Come Before Delegation
• [12:03] 3 Ways to Start Sharing Leadership This Week
• [13:39] Final Challenge: Step Back So Others Can Step Up

Conclusion:

True leadership isn’t about control—it’s about multiplying influence through trust. Empowering those closest to the work results in quicker decisions, stronger performance, and more engaged teams. Great leaders create clarity, offer support, and step aside so others can lead.

Resources:

• Book: Humane Leadership
• Substack
• LinkedIn
• X/Twitter
• YouTube

Transcript

Marcel Schwantes 00:03 

Hey gang, it's just you and me today. No guests, so you get more of me. And I'm going to start today's show with a question, okay, when you hear the phrase driving results, what comes to mind? So if you're like most executives, and many of you are who listen to this show, it probably feels like, you know, being in control, steering the ship, calling the shots, making sure everything gets done. After all, I mean, that's what leaders do, right? We drive performance, we drive productivity, we drive results.  

But here's the problem, we also drive cattle. Now there's a visual leaders sometimes push people like cattle, and a lot of companies still operate this way, right? But if you think about it, cattle have no say. They're herded in one direction, pushed to where, you know, the cattle rancher wants them to go. And honestly, that's not very empowering, right? Moving people along a path that someone else decided, maybe even a path that they don't want to go down, so companies can still operate this way and yet be profitable, but sometimes at the expense of their people, because they're often disengaged, uninspired and just doing what they're told. So that's not leadership, that's control.  

And if you want to unlock the potential, the full potential of your team, there's a better way, and that's what this episode is about. Today we are going to talk about a game changing person principle of servant leadership, and that is sharing your leadership. So quick definition, okay, servant leaders, they share power, push authority down and make sure people have the competence and the clarity to make great decisions. And this is how you move from a culture of command and control to a culture of commitment, loyalty and high performance. All right, so there are a few principles that we need to talk about when, when we talk about a culture of sharing leadership.  

Number one, first principle is you have to share your power and release control. Now, sharing power and releasing control feels very counterintuitive for a lot of you listening right now, right? Because we don't want to give up control. We're leaders. We're supposed to hang on to control. So conventional wisdom goes but ensuring leadership, we kind of flip that Script, Script around, right? We let our people take turns leading, letting them make decisions and own decisions. So I'll share a quick story.  

Okay, back in my corporate days, I'm going to go back now, gosh, over, slightly over 20 years. Okay, the best boss I ever had was an executive named Bruce. He was up in the C suite. I was an up and up and coming director, and I reported to Bruce. Now Bruce didn't get caught up in his title, even though he was my boss and he was up there in a C suite, he made me feel like an equal, and we shared decisions. And a lot of times he could have pulled rank, but instead he would ask questions like, hey, Marcel, what would you do in this situation?  

Sometimes that would take him by surprise a little bit, but once I understood the power that Bruce held is through empowerment and support and trying to make me better and stretching me to become a leader myself that really engaged me. Sometimes he would mentor me first and then hand me the responsibility. So here's the result of all that, because of Bruce, I became more engaged and more fulfilled at any point in my corporate career, okay, and because he trusted me to lead. And that's the power of releasing control. It turns employees into owners, and owners don't need to be driven. They lead themselves.  

The second principle that I want you to get, and maybe that Well, I want you to think about and challenge yourself is especially this one principle number two is, is pushing authority down. So this is where the magic happens. But it's very difficult, okay, pushing authority down to. People closest to the action. I will share another sort of a case study. How many of you have read the book turn the ship around?  

So if you have then this is going to, this is going to be a very familiar story, okay, it's the story of Captain David Marquet, a former captain and in the Navy who took command of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear powered submarine. And the USS Santa Fe was one of the worst performing submarines in the whole Navy fleet, and at first Captain Mark a LED, like every other captain, right? Giving order, shouting command, staying in control.  

But then it hit him, he was running a ship full of followers, and that's really dangerous in times of battle, right? When lives are at stake, right? You don't want to just all of a sudden not having people act with quick decision making if something like that happened, where you're in the heat of battle and everyone freezes because they're waiting for command from the top. So he flipped the script, instead of a leader, follower model, where he followed the hierarchy, right and people are just waiting for commands to be issued from the Ivory Tower, he built a leader, leader culture.  

He gave control to his crew, so every sailor in that in that in that submarine was a decision maker in within their own sphere of influence, right? So the result of that is the Santa Fe went from the worst performing submarine in the fleet to the first to the best performing submarine in the fleet, because people at every level stepped up and owned the mission. And that's because Captain Mark Kay made it his mission to make sure that people were empowered to own decisions, especially in during critical times, right? So Captain market calls this pushing authority down to information to where the action is.  

And so instead of hoarding control at the top, he gave it to his people who are already in where the action is, they have the facts to act. And so that was how they became very successful. And it doesn't work just for the Navy. It works well in business, where we empower the people below us right to own up their decisions. But here's what they need first, which leads to my third principle, before you start handing over the keys for people to make decisions, they have to have competence and they have to have clarity. Okay, if your people don't have the skills, knowledge, expertise, or even the big picture understanding of how their roles tasks kind of aligned with the bigger picture, with the mission sharing leadership is just going to backfire.  

So your job as a leader, and I'm speaking at the highest level here, if you're an executive listening to this, this is what you want to filter down to your middle managers, okay, is to raise people's competence. So ask yourself questions like, What do my people need to get good at? Where do they need more exposure, and what can they learn from the leaders within my organization to make better decisions? And then, once we have capable comp, competent leaders, you give them clarity, right? They need to know the mission, the goals, the purpose, and how that all lines up with the work that they're doing, so their decisions align with where the organization is headed, right? So when you take competence and you add it to clarity, all that translates to more confident employees. 

Marcel Schwantes 09:35 

Now they can act with more precision, with more confidence. They're more courageous in making decisions because they have the confidence to do it. They're no longer afraid or looking over their shoulder at their bosses waiting for commands. Okay, so I want to give you some practical steps to start sharing leadership, maybe this week. Yeah, okay. And so to make this conversation more real and more applicable to where you are, I recommend three steps. Number one is ask better questions. So next time you face a decision, don't give your team members the answers on a silver platter.  

Okay, so ask your team. Hey, what do you think we should do here? Or what would you do if you were in my shoes? This isn't a sign of weakness, it's opening up the floor to sort of tap into the full capabilities and capacities of your team members who are smart people. That's why you hired them. And if they now have the competence and the clarity of knowing what to do and when to do it, etc., they may already have the answers within them. Now it's up to you to kind of give them access to sharing their ideas, sharing input, and maybe even sharing the answers that to some of your biggest problems. So ask better questions.  

The second step that I urge you to take this week is hold a strategy meeting that isn't just about you issuing orders and commands. So next time you have a strategy meeting, I want you to invite your team to co shape the strategy right, put it before them and ask where they see the organization in three years, or what they would do differently in this strategy, what would they add to it? What would they tweak and again, you do this by modeling open it, openness, curiosity and active listening. You want to tap into the collective wisdom of your team, because they may have the answers for you.  

And then the third step I urge you to take this week is to check your org chart. Are the right people making the right decisions? Does authority sit where the information is closest to the action, if not as Captain David Marquet did you want to push it down? That is going to be counterintuitive, just like it was for David Mark Kay, but he trusted his team enough by giving, giving, giving them all the all the competence they needed to make decisions and making sure that there was clarity and the right expectations being said. Now you can push your authority down to others.  

Here's a bonus, set boundaries and remove fear. Oh, man, I'll tell you. Share leadership doesn't mean that you create an environment of high stress and anxiety. No people need to feel safe around making decisions. So define what decisions your team can make first and then make it safe for them to learn from their mistakes, so that they can correct course and next time make better decisions. Okay, so I'm going to close this way. Okay, when you share leadership, you're not losing control. You're actually multiplying it can. You're creating leaders at every level, and when people feel ownership, engagement and performance are going to go through the roof for you.  

So here's my challenge this week for you. Okay, I gave you some ideas. I gave you some steps. What can you do this week to give someone else the opportunity to lead? Think about that and write it down. All right? And if you want to go deeper, if you're ready to build a culture of leaders in your organization, I would love to help schedule a call with me. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about how to make this real for your team. I'm going to leave you a booking link to my calendar, check the show notes for that, click on it and schedule a call with me. There's no obligation. We're just going to have a conversation, all right, until next time. Remember, leadership is not about driving cattle, right? It's about unlocking the full potential of your people by sharing the lead. We'll see you next time.