The world and workforce have gone through tremendous changes. Has the approach to managing teams evolved enough to provide employees to feel a greater sense of empowerment, though? Significant changes require trust. Never has trust been more needed than now. Gone are the days where it’s easy to connect with an employee face-to-face in person. Whether it’s Zoom calls, Microsoft Teams, Slack, we have come to rely on technology more to communicate with our teams. That’s added an extra layer of complexity to managing a team. Leaders failing to foster trust within their teams make their own roles harder than they need to be. With social distancing and more remote work, leaders have been thrust into a situation where they must trust their team members more. An empowered team culture is what’s ultimately needed.
The Truth About Empowerment
Let us lay some cards on the table. Here are four truths happening in many organizations right now. Many employees feel less empowered than what their leaders think. Many leaders view empowerment as arming employees to make an experience right, usually after the fact. I argue it is so much more than making it right.
A lack of trust is a significant hindrance to creating a compelling empowered culture in any team. Trust is the foundation of all relationships, but some leaders often hoard resources, decisions, and ultimately empowerment.
Employees at all levels of an organization are craving empowerment in different forms:
- Workplace flexibility – People want to have a choice with when, where, and how they work.
- The assurance their voice is heard – people want to share their opinions on what works and what does not.
- A chance to impact relevance is essential, and everyone wants to feel like their role matters.
- Less stress and a more comfortable workday armed with better processes, tools, and technology – no one wants to work harder than they need to.
Defining Empowerment
Let’s first define employee empowerment as the definition might mean something different to everyone. Ask employees what they think is empowerment is, and you might get a different answer than a leader.
I define employee empowerment as how an organization provides its employees, teams, and leaders with a certain degree of autonomy and control in their day-to-day activities. Included within this is enabling employees to have a voice in setting their own work-related goals, input into their schedules, make decisions, and solve problems while acting in customers’ best interest within the organization’s culture.
We Need Empowerment Now More Than Ever
We are in the midst of a do more with less reality. The last couple of years has forced leaders to deal with some harsh realities. Between sometimes fewer resources, decisions on changing priorities, revenue impacts, or volume spikes – the fact is that many leaders across quite a few industries have needed to think differently about how we operate.
With sometimes fewer resources, businesses of all shapes and sizes need to become more efficient. Critical to this point is the elimination of wasted effort so that only value-added tasks remain. We need to get rid of what doesn’t provide value, eliminate distractions and inefficiencies. Empowered teams produce outstanding results because their culture stands out.
Priorities Are Changing
Some priorities need attention, and anything that isn’t a priority is a distraction. With everyone being pulled in one direction to the next, fighting fires is chaotic. With that in mind, it’s easy to see the benefit of having more empowered team members. We are also experiencing a war for talent still in many industries. With high unemployment or furloughs, some organizations use this time to their advantage, scooping up under-utilized, unempowered talent.
I define under-utilized talent as failing to effectively use the skills of employees, the team, or the organization to their fullest capabilities and potential. Some examples include not providing professional development, not aligning tasks with strengths, limited empowerment, authority, or responsibility, failing to solicit feedback or ideas from members who do the work. To remain competitive, leaders can’t afford to lose their talented superstars to the competition.
Employees Also Crave Great Leadership
People who are empowered demonstrate higher levels of job satisfaction and performance while also saving leaders time. With time at a premium, empowering team members will ensure that leaders remain better balanced between the tactical (day-to-day responsibilities) and working on the business (strategy, mid-to-long-term focus) that’s required.
7 Ways To Create A More Empowered Culture
There are always new ways to create a game-changing team culture where everyone feels empowered. But the truth is, it does not need to be complicated. We do not need to over-engineer solutions or ideas. When leaders simplify their approach and prioritize the employee experience, it is more effective, leading to more significant results.
1. Engage employees in process development and improvement opportunities.
We are sometimes guilty as leaders thinking we know where all the improvement opportunities might be. The truth is employees know more than we do about where we can improve. Ask for feedback. How can we improve, where should we improve, and why? Armed with that insight, engage employees in making decisions themselves to drive improvements, not just when something goes wrong, but from the onset.
2. Give employees a voice into product and service improvements.
Use the Start, Stop, Continue approach. What are things that need to be started, stopped, or continued on your team? Hold focus groups with your team, soliciting their ideas. But the key to seeking ideas is acting on them. If you don’t do anything with employee feedback, it’s a waste. Empower employees to take the lead or contribute to new ideas.
3. Implement flexible schedules.
Invite everyone to share their preferences with how, when, and where they work best. If you can support working remotely, do so, with clear expectations about performance, and trust them. Flexibility is desired now more than ever, and I would argue that it will become table stakes for many organizations. Sure, social distancing has necessitated that many organizations adopt a remote workforce. With leaders unable to regularly see their employees, leaning more into fostering trust and empowerment is critical to long-term success. People want choices.
4. Recognize that expectations are everything.
If leaders believe someone cannot do something, the truth is, they often will not. You can empower someone by demonstrating that you believe and trust them. Instill confidence by rewarding excellent performance.
5. Embrace the pilot approach.
Accept mistakes as a form of learning while trying new methods. Provide everyone with time to drive continuous improvement in the form of project work. Build project work time into everyone’s schedule so they can help drive change and innovation, piloting new approaches.
6. Create a culture of celebrating successes.
Acknowledge top performance. Reinforcement does not need to be a big production either, as sometimes all people want to hear are two powerful words – thank you! Perks and parties do not create a culture of celebrating successes or drive long-term employee experiences that reinforce empowering others to act. Genuine appreciation is what ultimately makes the difference.
7. Leaders, know your role and embrace it.
If you are a leader and want to create a more empowered culture, the truth is you need to get out of your team’s way. As a leader, your role is to help remove obstacles, knock down walls and silos, get stones out of their way that prevents them from delivering results. Sometimes less is more effective. Step back and provide support to your team.
Too much circulation reduces value. That certainly applies from a leadership perspective. The more we are around, the more employees rely on us, the less likely they will feel empowered to act on their own or use the resources at their disposal. Leaders need to step back and trust their people to figure it out. Leaders do not need to be so intimately involved in the day-to-day. They need to trust their teams that they are doing the right things. Giving proper guidance and coaching is essential in any environment with clear objectives and expectations, which is part of a leader’s role in fostering an empowered culture.
Evolving The Approach To Management
I would argue that management styles, in general, need to evolve based on the current environment. With an eye for being more proactive than reactive, leaders need to have a strategy to create an empowered team for the short, mid, and long-term, as change continues to happen. Great leaders focus on molding the next generation of new leaders, modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision of the future, challenging broken processes and tools, empowering others to act.
Leader’s Role
Excellent leaders recognize that key to their success as a leader is ensuring their team is successful first. They choose to bring their best selves forward, acknowledging their role in a positive employee experience but neglect to take full credit for all successes. Leaders free themselves up for more value-added activities while developing their top talent in a culture of coaching through delegation of critical tasks. There is a domino effect in that top talent pass along good habits throughout the team, too.
Judging Performance
Now an essential part of evolving one’s management approach needs to be around judging performance. Whenever possible, leaders need to align with employees on expectations, giving them a voice regarding how their performance is measured. The act of giving them a voice is a form of empowerment.
Many organizations are judging performance incorrectly, relying on subjective feelings instead of objective facts. Unfortunately, though, when some leaders and organizations try to create metrics, objectives, KPIs, etc., the way they measure performance is often wrong. You get what you reward, so you need to be careful with how performance is measured. When the ways we measure success is flawed, the whole system suffers. Wherever possible, leaders need to align with employees on expectations, giving them a voice regarding how they are measured in terms of performance. The act of giving them a voice is a form of empowerment.
Continuous Improvement Is Key
One area that is vital where management approaches need to evolve is continuous improvement. The reality is, no one wants to work harder than required. So, whenever and wherever possible, the goal needs to be to simplify.
If processes and tools can be optimized, employees will want to have their voices heard. Empower team members to lead core project teams to drive improvement or be key contributors to make a difference. Doing so creates tremendous growth and development opportunities.
Make it everyone’s mission, across all levels of the team, to help drive continuous improvement. If processes and tools can be optimized, I am 100% confident that people will want to have their voices heard because they want to make their own jobs and lives more comfortable. I find the more employees can tackle stretch assignments. The more you can empower them, which leads to even more increased benefits and results.
Top-Down Empowerment
One fact that I wholeheartedly believe is that empowerment does need to be top-down in an organization. Empowerment needs to permeate throughout all levels of the team and organization. Empowered leaders enable their teams to achieve greatness. It needs to be top-down enforced in the organization for a culture of empowerment to flourish. If you are a leader and find that you are not empowered, you need to have a conversation about changing that. If you are not fully empowered, you might not be willing to empower others.
Use Technology To Drive Empowerment
Technology is a critical component of enabling others to act when it comes to empowering employees. We need to rely on technology a lot more than we are. I would argue that many organizations are underutilizing the technology they already have. Technology is critical to helping enable employees to act efficiently and productively. Leaders need to proactively identify and anticipate technology changes to reduce efforts well in advance.
But money is tight, or maybe your budget never gets approved. It’s like getting candy from a vending machine that’s stuck. Sometimes, it’s going to take multiple attempts, hitting it from a ton of different angles to get what you want. You may need to do numerous business cases or sway more teams or leaders to your cause when creating a case for change when you are looking to improve or acquire tools or technology. Build your business case for change by monetizing the savings while demonstrating the value of investing in tech to better empower your team.
Empowerment & Pilots
Earlier I talked about embracing the pilot approach. The same needs to be tried with technology. If needed, position some investments as pilots, if you can, to demonstrate the return-on-investment, to secure a longer-term commitment. You might need to investigate the possibility of shorter-term commitments, 3 to 6 months, if possible, to prove out the value in how an investment creates a more empowered culture.
Free Up Capacity
If you free up time for your team, everyone wins. People want to be empowered. Empowerment is about enabling people to do more, so piloting new approaches can make a world of difference. With the right strategy and roadmap, unique people-first cultures with best in class tools help create a more empowered culture.
Wherever you can, eliminate routine tasks. Sure, that might require an investment in some technology, but the effort is worth it. Whenever team members can be leveraged and empowered, it’s a win-win for everyone. It’s critical to leverage the collective power of your team – to empower them. The only way you do that in today’s reality, in many cases, is to free up capacity. Make their lives easier by allowing them to do more, provide feedback, and empower them to act.
Final Thoughts On Fostering An Empowered Team Culture
Empowerment is needed now more than ever – a fact that we cannot forget. The world is quickly changing. As it evolves, we need to look at what we are doing as leaders. Are we creating a culture that fosters leaders’ next generation, or are we holding progress back?
We need to give people the opportunities to shine and grow, contribute to project work, development opportunities, and continuous improvement – things that will drive value. Let your team work on reducing wasted effort, so only value-added activities remain. When you do this, a more empowered culture will exist.
