Empower Your People For Results
Monday 18 September, 2006
Empowering people is closely aligned with facilitative
leadership. And while ‘facilitative leadership' is a term that has many
different meanings for different people, essentially it is all about
letting your people reach their potential.
Many companies make statements about empowerment.
Everyone says that they ‘empower' their people.
We empower our staff to be accountable for their assignments and we delegate to all our people the authority to complete assignments efficiently.
We empower our staff to seek out the resources needed to complete their projects.
We share project experience, thereby empowering our people with the diversity of experience that they need.
We support risk taking by empowering staff to work outside of their comfort zone.
These are typical of the policy statements that are so often made.
If you look at leadership skills along a continuum from persuasion through collaboration to facilitation, most managers would be required to engage a variety of approaches at different times.
Some workers almost do not need a manager or leader at all. For best results, the manager keeps out of the way. The job of manager is to facilitate - to clear red tape and ensure that there are no roadblocks in the way of efficient job progress. It's easy to empower in these sort of situations.
Some workers at the other end of the continuum, need lots of persuasion. They provide a challenge for the manager and all the skills the manager can muster are required. Empowerment may be the ideal, but it is not always practical.
The manager who can take the role of a facilitator blends his or her role of visionary decisive leader with that of listening and empowering leader. As a facilitative leader he or she involves followers as much as possible in creating the group's vision and purpose, carrying out the vision and purpose, and building a productive and cohesive team.
An empowering manager is someone who acts on the premise that a leader does not do for others what they can do for themselves.
In many ways, empowering staff is the first step to creating a quality culture.
In practical terms, empowerment can amount to freeing employees to fulfil customer needs. In customer facing roles, to become a better organisation, it is important to be able to rely on the personal judgment of staff members.
In case after case, it is clear that companies with high employee involvement perform better over the long run, and staff morale is improved when employees are more involved in decision-making.
But empowering staff is not the full story. It can only be effective where managers and staff share common thinking, behaviours, values, norms and expectations.
One of the proven techniques for empowering workers is to give them more authority. While employee autonomy is a concept that has been around for decades, some management consultants would say that very few companies have successfully developed it.
To empower your people it is often good to take a look at the policies and regulations that may be keeping your employees from satisfying customer demands.
It is difficult to feel empowered, if your responsibilities are too narrow and if you have to hand over most customers to staff in other departments. If you want to increase empowerment check that this is not happening.
If you really want to empower your staff, it is important to let them know that's how you're thinking.
Source:ceoonline.com
Everyone says that they ‘empower' their people.
We empower our staff to be accountable for their assignments and we delegate to all our people the authority to complete assignments efficiently.
We empower our staff to seek out the resources needed to complete their projects.
We share project experience, thereby empowering our people with the diversity of experience that they need.
We support risk taking by empowering staff to work outside of their comfort zone.
These are typical of the policy statements that are so often made.
If you look at leadership skills along a continuum from persuasion through collaboration to facilitation, most managers would be required to engage a variety of approaches at different times.
Some workers almost do not need a manager or leader at all. For best results, the manager keeps out of the way. The job of manager is to facilitate - to clear red tape and ensure that there are no roadblocks in the way of efficient job progress. It's easy to empower in these sort of situations.
Some workers at the other end of the continuum, need lots of persuasion. They provide a challenge for the manager and all the skills the manager can muster are required. Empowerment may be the ideal, but it is not always practical.
The manager who can take the role of a facilitator blends his or her role of visionary decisive leader with that of listening and empowering leader. As a facilitative leader he or she involves followers as much as possible in creating the group's vision and purpose, carrying out the vision and purpose, and building a productive and cohesive team.
An empowering manager is someone who acts on the premise that a leader does not do for others what they can do for themselves.
In many ways, empowering staff is the first step to creating a quality culture.
In practical terms, empowerment can amount to freeing employees to fulfil customer needs. In customer facing roles, to become a better organisation, it is important to be able to rely on the personal judgment of staff members.
In case after case, it is clear that companies with high employee involvement perform better over the long run, and staff morale is improved when employees are more involved in decision-making.
But empowering staff is not the full story. It can only be effective where managers and staff share common thinking, behaviours, values, norms and expectations.
One of the proven techniques for empowering workers is to give them more authority. While employee autonomy is a concept that has been around for decades, some management consultants would say that very few companies have successfully developed it.
To empower your people it is often good to take a look at the policies and regulations that may be keeping your employees from satisfying customer demands.
It is difficult to feel empowered, if your responsibilities are too narrow and if you have to hand over most customers to staff in other departments. If you want to increase empowerment check that this is not happening.
If you really want to empower your staff, it is important to let them know that's how you're thinking.
- Publicly commit yourself to open communication. Tell them
frequently that you value their ideas and consider them important
members of a problem-solving team.
- Get with them and interact with them at their level. Spend time with your workers at their job sites or in their offices. Let them know that you are concerned and interested in their jobs and welfare.
Source:ceoonline.com
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