“If it were easy to empower employees, everyone would do it.”
-Kevin Daum
Since it is your employees who work on the tasks/projects/assignments of generating ideas, creating those ideas and then producing the ideas as breakthrough results, doesn’t it make sense to empower them? You u hired smart people, now help them do what you pay them.
By leading your employees to generate, create and produce the breakthrough results you need and want for your business to thrive, how will you help them move forward? Give them the power to control, decide and generate the work results the way they do best.
The leadership challenge here is that not all leaders have the skills or training, time or focus to create an environment of empowerment. For a leader to want higher performance and breakthrough the previous ways of getting business done, you need to create the workplace that will bring out the best in your employees. This sometimes means “hands-on” approach in working side-by-side with your employees to help them go in the right direction.
Having the support from the top down is most important when empowering employees. This is not to say that employees have carte blanche to do what they want. Leaders give their instructions of what needs to be achieved. The employees then generate and create how to get the job accomplished.
A Proactive Company Culture Drives Employee Initiative
With a vision and a goal, leaders develop their employees to be proactive in establishing new ways to reach not just their end-goal, but also authorizing teams to make decisions. If they don’t take the initiative by seeking out new projects and looking for opportunities to share their ideas and suggestions, an organization can become ensnared in old ways of doing things.
When this proactive culture is missing, employees’ ideas and actions are often met with criticism or dismissal, and they may stop trying to come up with new and better ways to do things. They become disengaged
Encourage Safe Failure
Many leaders and organizations are risk-adverse. Those leaders who allow their employees to fail expect this and encourage failure to take place in order for employees to experience the thrill of the challenge. On top of this, employees will gain understanding and feel comfortable innovating the results they produce.
Taking a Different Point of View
According to Kinicki & Kreitner, empowerment is about giving employees the permission to give customers priority and to use their creative talents to find solutions when issues arise. Empower employees to make a difference. Change conventional wisdom and status quo not to exist in your workplace.
Challenge your employee’s assumptions, beliefs and thoughts. For leaders to empower employees, these individuals become great innovators who do not take the traditional view and develop existing ideas. They take an entirely different view and use it to their advantage for generating and creating great results.
Self-Motivated Team
Having engaged, empowered, enthusiastic employees, you as leader provide the tools, encouragement and authority enabling them to use their strengths, skills and talent effectively to do their best.
Empowering employees to increase their satisfaction and the organization’s performance will require a greater amount of communication than ever thought possible
Create an Environment that Celebrates Both Successes and Failures
Don’t just celebrate the successes, celebrate the employees who took a risk but maybe didn’t obtain the results intended but learned valuable lessons themselves and for the company.
All of these combined helps leaders help their employees become more empowered to become more engaged in their work. By empowering your employees, they get to interact more with other employees who can help when employees hit an obstacle or when they get stuck on creating the results needed.
Your empowered employees get to make decisions to help your organization move forward to thrive beyond where you are right now. The best leaders are those who empower others. Empower means to put energy into something or someone. When we empower someone, we infuse him or her with our strength, support and acknowledgment to carry things forward.
By empowering employees, leaders understand that these individuals with generate, create and produce breakthrough results with cooperative and collaborative team work.