If you want to empower your employees—truly empower them—you need to do the following:
Invest in your employees’ knowledge, skills, and ability. Failure to train is shortsighted, whether your goal is to delegate or empower. When you delegate, you want to be sure that the employee is capable of handling the responsibility. In the case of empowerment, training can not only enable your employees to handle the work but also contribute to increased self-esteem, which will make employees more comfortable with greater responsibility.
Training should involve not only the skills, abilities, and knowledge your empowered employee will need but also corporate values and business finance. The training in financial management shouldn’t be so complex that only an economist could understand it. I know of one company that built its financial management training around the idea of a children’s lemonade stand, a model easily understood by the plant’s managers. The company found a way to put complex ideas into simple words and graphs and pie charts, and you can do the same for your work unit.
Believe in your employees’ ability to be successful. You have to trust your employees to do a job well when you empower, just as when you delegate. Your workers will know that you have faith in them to make the right decisions.
Be clear about your expectations. Your employees need insights into your goals, beyond just task completion. Be sure they know about the importance you place on quality or customer service or market share. Your priorities should influence their decisions.
Provide a safety net. Set up management controls to ensure that you hear about problems before they grow beyond control. There are limits to what empowered employees can do, and they need to know them. One example might be modifying work procedures without getting approval from those responsible for initially setting them.
Identify those who can and those who can’t be empowered. Those with the capability to be empowered should be asked if they have seen problems that they would like to address or decisions they would like to handle. Not only does this query demonstrate your desire to empower your employees, it demonstrates your interest in your staff’s growth and development, something that can’t help but motivate your employees. Those unable to handle empowerment may still handle delegation.
Share information. Empowered employees need to know the situation from a micro and macro perspective. “They don’t really care about the organization’s goals or objectives,” you say. If you’re right, then the blame rests with you. A caring attitude is something you as a manager need to create in your employees.
Put peer pressure to work. Recognition helps ensure that delegated work gets done. It also ensures that employees fully utilize the opportunity that comes with empowerment. Let employees’ peers know when their coworkers have broken sales records, identified new product offerings, or found ways to reduce accident levels. Demonstrate the respect they have earned, so that their peers will want the same opportunity.
Tips Use delegation and empowerment to train your staff members.
Pick delegates who are confident enough to admit they are encountering problems.
Make sure that those empowered to oversee tasks are not limited by lack of others’ support, both within and outside your unit.
As a new manager, you may have to overcome bad experiences your employees may have had with managers who talked about empowering their staff members but did nothing more than heap more work upon them. When you use the term empowerment, you have to mean it. You have to demonstrate to your workers by your actions that empowerment isn’t just the latest management buzzword. Otherwise, you will wind up with disappointed, demoralized employees.
Expect delegates to achieve performance at least equal to your own. Otherwise, coaching is in order.
Yes or No How many of these statements reflect your thinking?
I use my failures to learn valuable lessons for future delegating and empowering.
I make opportunities to recognize employees who have taken on delegated or empowered responsibilities.
I ensure that I am accessible to provide feedback to employees with delegated and empowered responsibilities.
I keep an up-to-date log of which tasks I have delegated and which ones I have empowered, and to whom.
I encourage delegates and empowered employees to use their initiative when confronted with problems.
I ensure that my employees understand the extent of their accountability from delegation and empowerment.
I monitor progress but don’t constantly intervene.
I see that staff members are trained in the skills, abilities, or knowledge associated with tasks delegated or empowered.
I keep notes of errors made and lessons learned for future reference.
I recognize the effort that my employees put into completion of a delegated or empowered task and reward them for it.
Did You Know? Delegation and empowerment are done more freely in the United States than in Japan, where failure is considered shameful. Germany is similar to Japan. Actually, in most highly structured cultures, managers retain more control of tasks, delegating and empowering less.