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There is a direct correlation between employee engagement and empowerment. Employees who feel empowered have a higher level of job satisfaction, which leads to better results and outcomes than those who do not feel empowered. As with trust, empowerment is built over time. Don’t play the fool and assume your team feels empowered. Take action to create and maintain a culture of empowerment.
Your Employees Want to Make an Impact - Let Them!
During the interview process and honeymoon period, your new employee is excited, engaged, and eager to be your next superstar. They can’t wait to show you the impact they can make and want to use their skills and knowledge to do so. You hired them for the same reasons. You saw potential, confirmed they had the right skills and experience, and vetted them as a cultural fit. So why would you not let them do what they were hired to do?
The answer is empowerment. Trusting and empowering employees to do their jobs allows you as the leader to get out of the day-to-day churn and lead. If you don’t let your team fulfill the responsibilities you hired them to carry out, why even have a team?
How Do I Empower My Team?
As a leader, it is your job to bring about empowerment by removing obstacles that prevent success. In fact, sometimes even the leader can be the biggest obstacle! Get out of your team’s way and follow these four key actions to help them feel more empowered.
Clear Expectations
This is perhaps the number one thing you must do in order to empower your team. Setting clear expectations gives your employees guidelines and boundaries. As long as they follow your expectations, let them do their job. Be very clear in your requests, don’t fall into the trap of assuming the team knows your standards. It’s a good idea to check in on a regular basis to make sure everyone’s reading from the same playbook.
Hire the Right People
Not every person is a good fit for empowerment. There are employees and managers who prefer to work in an environment where all decisions are made for them. If you want a culture of empowerment, you need to hire for it.
Learn to Delegate
Empowering someone means you trust them with a certain level of authority to make a decision on their own. This is the best way to let your team shine. If you’re not able to delegate and step out of the way, empowerment is out of the question.
Build Trust
Empowerment and trust go hand in hand. The more you empower your team and show them you support the decisions they make, the more trust you will build. It’s important to connect your words with actions so your team feels confident they can make a decision without any negative backlash. If you don’t agree with a particular decision, it’s okay to use that as a coaching moment, but be sure to inspire and not demotivate.
Empowerment Exercise: The Decision Tree
A quick but very effective exercise you can do with your team is to go through the “Decision Tree Exercise.” You can also download a free copy of the decision tree exercise.
1. Work with your team to write up a list of common decisions they face that they typically come to you for approval.
2. Categorize the list into the following type of decisions:
Leaf Decisions: Make a decision, act on it, no need to report back
Branch Decisions: Make a decision, act on it, report back later
Trunk Decisions: Make a decision, check with the manager before acting
Root Decisions: Discuss with the manager before a decision is made
3. Review this exercise on a quarterly basis and stick to it. Consistency is essential to empower your team to make decisions on their own.
Working through this exercise clarifies the leaf and branch decisions employees can make on their own. It also frees up more of your time to focus on strategic activities instead of approving actions that your team should be enabled to handle.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to empower your team, the Clear Direction Manager Development Program will train you how to be a better leader. This online program is customized to your strengths and blinds spots and can be completed in the comfort of your office. Learn more today.