Are you empowering your employees?
If you’re a CEO or manager, one of your many wishes is likely to be to have enthusiastic, engaged, and empowered employees who take initiative with little direction from you. Unfortunately, as an employer, it can be easy to confuse delegation with empowerment. You may not realize until too late that delegation does not necessarily give employees the freedom to take independent action. You can’t just “give” power to your employees and hope for the best.
So what can you do? You can foster an environment in which employees not only understand the vision and goals of the company, but also feel that they have the power to be proactive and do whatever it takes to achieve them. In other words, you can start training employees to do what it takes to achieve company goals.
Empowering employees: it starts with you
How are your leadership skills? What are you doing to inspire the best work ethic and commitment in your team? You can’t expect your employees to believe in your company if they don’t see you committed to their advancement as well. Create a stable atmosphere by staying committed to your work, principles and people, and remember to keep the lines of communication open by talking regularly with your staff to reiterate the company’s mission, goals and expectations.
As always, offer as much information as you can regarding a particular task or assignment. Check back with individual team members frequently to ensure they understand their roles. Remember that confident leadership and open communication are the cornerstones of good management, and better performance will pay off your time.
Empowering Employees: Face-to-Face Time
Email is fast, but its ease of use isn’t always pleasant and effective. While it’s one of the fastest methods of communication, skipping email and sitting down with an employee once a week can go a long way in showing that you truly care about your employees, their work, and their concerns. Whether that means simply stopping by your desk for a few minutes each day or closing the door to discuss the area for improvement, a short conversation can give an employee the confidence to produce the results you want to achieve.
Empowering Employees: Don’t Be an Autocrat
What distinguishes autocratic managers? They are noticed by the way they micromanage their staff. Micromanaging diminishes an employee’s self-confidence and reduces his ability (and more importantly, his desire) to take initiative and think for himself. Instead, an empowering employee mindset leads to better problem solving, communication, conflict resolution, and time management.
Empower employees: give staff freedom
Traditionally, it was assumed that most of the knowledge and experience within a company resides at the top with the CEO, VPs, and managers. As a company leader, do your part to change that tradition and show frontline employees that management not only understands what it asks of employees, but is also willing to roll up their sleeves to do whatever it takes to achieve it. the company. goals in the trenches.
As you begin the process of empowering employees, remember that “empowering” means very little other than simply giving your team freedom. Trust your employees to make the right decisions, then step back and see how they rise to the occasion to be productive individually and work together as a team to achieve performance goals and move your business forward.
Learn more about empowering employees to take your business to the next level by visiting www.ThinkBlueThinking.com or calling 619.550.8052.