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Most organizations seem to be either energized with
excellence or crippled with complacency. The Empowerment process will help
assure the former and avoid the latter. Empowerment, unfortunately, is a
term that has been used so frequently by people who don¹t know what it is that
it has lost much of its impact today. Empowerment is much more than just business-speak.
Properly implemented, it can become a culture-enhancing premise for all
types of organizations.
Empowerment means providing team members with the tools, skills and confidence
that enable them to be their own authority. The “how to empower” issue
really has four key pieces to it. First, provide evidence that you
are serious in giving people the opportunity to impact the success of your
organization. The best evidence is not what you say, it is what you do.
The second piece to successful empowerment involves communicating
the reasons why you are taking this step. You must clearly explain why
you are changing your approach, and why now is the time to do it. A clear
explanation will make people believe that this is not a fad, but a basic shift
in how your organization must work. The next piece is to provide
written guidelines regarding what the process is and how it works.
Areas that have been empowered, and under what set of conditions
independent action can be taken, must be clearly spelled out.
Finally, you must provide them with confidence you
will back them up in using the power you have given them. The
actions that come from empowered employees may not be the exact steps you would
have taken, but that is not the point. Particularly early on in an
empowerment process, you must go out of your way to support their initiative.
They will quickly tell other team members of their experience--positive or
negative in this regard.
Leaders who successfully empower their team members have some things in
common. Let’s evaluate your “Empowerment Quotient”. As you go
through the list below, keep a running tab of your own practices. For each
item, give yourself a three if you think you do this nearly all of the time, a
two for most of the time, and a one for sometimes. For the things you
don’t do at all, give yourself a zero.
1. Share information
openly.
2. Put the team first.
3. Ask and encourage
questions.
4. Seek first to
understand.
5. Be part of the
solution.
6. Build trust with
integrity.
7. Seek and respect
others¹ opinions.
8. Never lose sight of
the team¹s vision.
9. Make thoughtful
decisions.
10. Treat all team members with dignity.
11. Be accountable for your actions and the team¹s performance.
12. Learn from mistakes (both yours and others).
13. Always work on self-improvement.
14. Depend on each other.
15. Be patient and persevere.
Well, it is time to total your score. If you honestly gave yourself a
score of 40, you are truly an empowering leader. Keep it up. A score
of 36 to 39 is a very strong indication that you are on the right track.
You hopefully found an area or two for improvement, but you have many of
the traits of an empowering leader. From 30 to 35, you have some strong
traits, but others seem to be lacking. Work on these areas and you can
move up. With a score below 30, you have a lot of room for improvement,
but step one is knowing that is the case. Begin
working on your lowest score areas, and you can bet that your team members will
begin to notice.
Keep in mind that this assessment was a self- assessment. The real measure
is how your people feel you rate on these issues. Talk with your team.
Demonstrate your commitment to adopt best practices in this and other
areas. The impact can carry you and your team to greater heights of
excellence and a more satisfying working environment.
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