10 Key Steps to Empower your Team

"The conversion to a team mentality is difficult because effective teams must be predicated on TRUST." - George Sawiris

It’s every manager’s privilege to work with a team that shows initiative in completing tasks with little guidance. For this to occur, there often lies the barrier of leadership challenge that needs to be overcome. Leaders in some instances, have not effectively empowered their employees or, worse, have interrupted workflow through micro-managing their activities. The result of this is losing the commitment of the team and a lack of trust on the leader’s behalf. Unfortunately, this occurs often as leaders believe they can manage their workload alone, and many do try! it’s essential that the leader play their part in empowering those surrounding him or her in order for the business to be successful in the long-term.

So, what does successful empowerment look like?

It’s the state in which the ‘how’ is left to the individual. Key job objectives will be agreed upon in discussion between the manager and their report and how these objectives are achieved is left to the initiative of the employee. This requires leaders to equip employees with the necessary tools and authority to ensure they’re properly trained and skilled in carrying out the task at hand. In doing so, teams will have an increased level of authority and responsibility over their work, providing them the autonomy to make their own decisions, manage work and solve their own problems. You may feel as a leader that your work has become redundant through delegating your responsibilities to others. On the contrary, you still stand as the main problem solver and manager leading the team who now has more time to focus on matters that are more important!

Now What?

The idea at work...Here are 10 key steps to do differently if you want to empower your team

Step 1: Create psychological safety.

Make this your explicit priority of your leadership. Facilitate everyone speaking up as a core team value. Establish norms for how failure is handled. Create space for new ideas (even wild ones). Embrace the productive conflict that will occur and how its handled.

Step 2: Establish trust.

Without psychological safety, trust cannot be built on a team and it is built over time and requires a commitment of the leader and every single team member. Never underestimate the "trust factor" Trust comes from exhibiting many key traits, including competence, character, courage, communication, consistency, loyalty, confidence, selflessness, sacrifice, and empathy. Be a servant leader, help people accomplish their goals that eminate from the vision. Give them the tools they need, and turn them loose.

Step 3: Encourage an open dialogue to learn from any mistakes.

Many companies are structured with a top-down communication and often, employees in this environment feel it isn’t constructive to speak up about issues. This is usually due to feeling that their opinion won’t have an impact. So make sure you acknowledge your team for sharing and reward valuable input that benefits the company.

Step 4: Present New Opportunities and Challenges.

In any job, it’s important for the employee to feel like they’re growing professionally and achieving their full potential. Challenge your employees! You can do this by taking notice of their strengths and weaknesses. For example, you might notice that one of your employee’s strengths is overseeing campaigns from start to finish. You can provide this person the responsibility of project management to further develop their skills in this area.

Step 5: Respect Their Boundaries.

Although you may want your employees to embrace new challenges, you don’t want to push them too far out of their comfort zone into the deep end. Remember to ask what they feel comfortable with doing before delegating a task.

Step 6: Support Employee Independence.

Try to avoid checking in too often on their responsibilities as this is just shy of babysitting and no one wants that! If employees work in an environment where they’re constantly being pulled up for corrections, this inhibits them from growing professionally and they’ll constantly look for approval before taking action. Give them the opportunity to solve their own problems. The more input the employee has in the project, the more invested he or she is, which usually leads to better results. Inevitably, they may slip up and make mistakes and this leads me to my next tip.

Step 7: Encourage Safe Failure.

Within the appropriate boundaries that limits company risk, employees are bound to make mistakes that will pose less of a threat to the organisation. Provide them a chance to test new ideas and learn from their successes and failures. This in turns encourages your employee to be more innovative!

Step 8: Clearly Define Roles & Responsibilities.

Your employees will need boundaries or guidelines set in order to assist their understanding of what exactly is expected of them, so it’s advised to establish specific responsibilities and roles with each employee. This reduces inefficiency and allows the team to work together more cooperatively, yet still autonomously.

Step 9: Provide Employees with the Skills and Tools to Complete Tasks.

Often, many leaders forget that employees don’t have the ‘know-how’ and view them as insufficient at their job. Often, the reason for this is because they don’t possess the knowledge or resources to complete the task. In circumstances like this, allocating time and money towards personal development and management training goes a long way in helping your employees advance.

Step 10: Appreciate Their Efforts.

Although your employees are doing what they are paid to do, your best employees don’t work for the money. Those who are empowered will find a greater sense of satisfaction from their job over financial stability. It goes a long way to thank your employees and show that you value their contribution to the company. This in turn drives them to show more initiative, so don’t be afraid to celebrate your employees!

posted by Mr Lanning Bennett on October 2011

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updated by George K Sawiris AFAMI on November 2021

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