Empower your Team

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“To achieve true empowerment, you have to allow employees to unleash their own power. As a result, they will be able to empower themselves.”

Mohasseb, S. (2020)

Leading an Empowered Team

Heathfield (2017) identifies ten important principles for leading people in a way that reinforces employee empowerment, accomplishment and contribution:

Empowerment requires a culture of trust and appropriate information and communication systems. It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure a culture of trust exists that invites opinion and fosters innovative ideas.

When employees are empowered, their confidence levels can increase, creating happier workers and increased productivity.

However, some team members may confuse empowerment and being able to make their own decisions with having the authority to do whatever they want; interpersonal relationships within the team may then suffer and conflict arise, making for a toxic work environment.

That is, empowerment does not mean that managers abdicate responsibility and delegate all decision-making; employees must still be held accountable for their decisions:
‘Organisations must prepare their employees for the responsibilities that would fall upon them in the organisation’s quest to achieve employee empowerment. For employees to feel like their decisions matter, they need to feel accountable for the decisions they make on an on-going basis.’ HDR Connect (2019)

For successful employee empowerment, the basic needs of employees in the workplace must feel met.
Keeping staff informed of changes within the company and providing training in all processes can give them a
sense of empowerment. Providing interesting tasks and new challenges can give a sense of empowerment to
the individual. Providing resources and enabling others to realise personal development options can also aid
motivation and recognition plays a big part in this so that team members will want to voluntarily give extra effort
in the work place.

Empowerment does not mean that managers abdicate responsibility and delegate all decision-making; employees must still be held accountable for any decisions they do make:

Empowerment through Delegation

By delegating work, a leader is expressing confidence in and acknowledgement of, the ability of an individual or team to complete work to the required standard within the required timeframe and for team members to make their own decisions and choices for this to be achieved successfully.

This does not mean leaving team members feeling isolated and with no support:

The authority you delegate to your team members gives them permission to carry out assigned tasks. Depending on the level of delegation, this trust can both empower and motivate. For example, you could give authority to the team member to make decisions but require them to report back immediately. Alternatively, you may require that the team member reports back at defined intervals when decisions are made and thereby maintain a greater level of influence and control over the task at hand. Coppock (2007) advises that when someone wants to talk to you, it is important to clarify whether they require Support, Advice, Information or a Decision.