When thinking about empowerment in human relations terms, try to avoid thinking of it as something that one individual does for another. This is one of the problems organizations have experienced with the concept of empowerment. People think that "someone," usually the manager, has to bestow empowerment on the people who report to him.
Consequently, the reporting staff members "wait" for the bestowing of empowerment, and the manager asks why people won't act in empowered ways. This led to a general unhappiness, mostly undeserved, with the concept of empowerment in many organizations.
Think of empowerment, instead, as the process of an individual enabling himself to take action and control work and decision making in autonomous ways.
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Empowerment comes from the individual.
The organization has the responsibility to create a work environment which helps foster the ability and desire of employees to act in empowered ways. The work organization has the responsibility to remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways.
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Employee involvement and participative management are often used to mean empowerment. They are not really interchangeable.
The Credo of an Empowering Manager
Looking for real management advice about people? Your goal is
-to create a work environment in which people are empowered, productive, contributing, and happy.
-Don't hobble them by limiting their tools or information.
-Trust them to do the right thing.
-Get out of their way and watch them catch fire.
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These are the ten most important principles for managing people in a way that reinforces employee empowerment, accomplishment, and contribution. These management actions enable both the people who work with you and the people who report to you to soar.
1. Demonstrate You Value People
Your regard for people shines through in all of your actions and words. Your facial expression, your body language, and your words express what you are thinking about the people who report to you. Your goal is to demonstrate your appreciation for each person's unique value. No matter how an employee is performing on their current task, your value for the employee as a human being should never falter and always be visible.
2. Share Leadership Vision
Help people feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves and their individual job. Do this by making sure they know and have access to the organization's overall mission, vision, and strategic plans.
3. Share Goals and Direction
Share the most important goals and direction for your group. Where possible, either make progress on goals measurable and observable, or ascertain that you have shared your picture of a positive outcome with the people responsible for accomplishing the results.
4. Trust People
Trust the intentions of people to do the right thing, make the right decision, and make choices that, while maybe not exactly what you would decide, still work.
5. Provide Information for Decision Making
Make certain that you have given people, or made sure that they have access to, all of the information they need to make thoughtful decisions.
6. Delegate Authority and Impact Opportunities, Not Just More Work
Don't just delegate the drudge work; delegate some of the fun stuff, too. You know, delegate the important meetings, the committee memberships that influence product development and decision making, and the projects that people and customers notice. The employee will grow and develop new skills. Your plate will be less full so you can concentrate on contribution. Your reporting staff will gratefully shine - and so will you.
7. Provide Frequent Feedback
Provide frequent feedback so that people know how they are doing. Sometimes, the purpose of feedback is reward and recognition. People deserve your constructive feedback, too, so they can continue to develop their knowledge and skills.
8. Solve Problems: Don't Pinpoint Problem People
When a problem occurs, ask what is wrong with the work system that caused the people to fail, not what is wrong with the people. Worst case response to problems? Seek to identify and punish the guilty. (Thank you, Dr. Deming.)
9. Listen to Learn and Ask Questions to Provide Guidance
Provide a space in which people will communicate by listening to them and asking them questions. Guide by asking questions, not by telling grown up people what to do. People generally know the right answers if they have the opportunity to produce them. When an employee brings you a problem to solve, ask, "What do you think you should do to solve this problem?" Or, ask, "what action steps do you recommend?" Employees can demonstrate what they know and grow in the process.
10. Help Employees Feel Rewarded and Recognized for Empowered Behavior
When employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and under-appreciated, don’t expect results from employee empowerment. The basic needs of employees must feel met for employees to give you their discretionary energy, that extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work.
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Why Employee Empowerment Fails
1.Managers pay lip service to empowerment, but do not really believe in its power. As with all management and business buzz words, employee empowerment can seem like a “good” thing to do. After all, well-respected management books recommend that you empower employees.
2. When you empower employees, they grow their skills and your organization benefits from their empowerment. Right. Employees know when you are serious about empowerment and when you understand and walk your talk. Half-hearted or unbelievable empowerment efforts will fail.
3. Managers don’t really understand what empowerment means. They have a vague notion that employee empowerment means you start a few teams that address workplace employee morale or safety. You ask people what they think about something at a meeting. Wrong. Employee empowerment is a philosophy or strategy that enables people to make decisions about their job.
4.Managers fail to establish boundaries for empowerment. In your absence, what decisions can be made by staff members? What decisions can employees make day-by-day that they do not need to have permission or oversight to make? These boundaries must be defined or employee empowerment efforts fail.
5. Managers have defined the decision making authority and boundaries with staff, but then micromanage the work of employees. This is usually because managers don’t trust staff to make good decisions. Staff members know this and either craftily make decisions on their own and hide their results or they come to you for everything because they don’t know what they really can control.
You can help staff make good decisions by coaching training, and providing necessary information. You can even model good decision making, But, what you cannot do, unless a serious complication will result, is undermine or change the decision you had empowered a staff person to make. Teach the employee to make a better decision next time. But don’t undermine their faith in their personal competence and in your trust, support, and approbation. You discourage empowerment for the future.
6. Managers need to provide growth and challenge opportunities and goals that your staff can aim for and achieve. Failure to provide a strategic framework, in which decisions have a compass and success measurements, imperils the opportunity for empowered behavior. Employees need direction to know how to practice empowerment.
7. If managers fail to provide the information and access to information, training, and learning opportunities needed for staff to make good decisions, don’t complain when empowerment efforts fall short. The organization has the responsibility to create a work environment that helps foster the ability and desire of employees to act in empowered ways.
Information is the key to successful employee empowerment.
8. Managers abdicate all responsibility and accountability for decision making. When reporting staff are blamed or punished for failures, mistakes, and less than optimum results, your employees will flee from empowerment. Or, they'll publicly identify reasons why failure was your fault, or his fault, or the other team's fault. Fail to publicly support decisions and stand behind your employees. Make staff feel deserted. You can make empowerment fail in sixty seconds. I guarantee it.
9. Allow barriers to impede the ability of staff members to practice empowered behavior. The work organization has the responsibility to remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways. These barriers can include time, tools, training, access to meetings and teams, financial resources, support from other staff members, and effective coaching.
10. When employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and under-appreciated, don’t expect results from employee empowerment. The basic needs of employees must feel met for employees to give you their discretionary energy, the extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work..
