Conveying confidence in employees’ ability to be successful, especially at challenging new tasks; delegating significant responsibility and authority; allowing employees freedom to decide how they will accomplish their goals and resolve issues.

An employee demonstrating this competency:

• Gives people latitude to make decisions in their own sphere of work
• Is able to let others make decisions and take charge
• Encourages individuals and groups to set their own goals, consistent with business goals
• Expresses confidence in the ability of others to be successful
• Encourages groups to resolve problems on their own; avoids prescribing a solution
  

Empowerment, the successful sharing of decision making and problem solving responsibilities is important to organizations for at least four reasons. First, it enables faster decisions and more responsiveness to internal and external customers and thus enhances an organization’s productivity and competitiveness. Second, empowerment leads to better utilization of people’s skills. Empowered employees, who do a wider variety of tasks, develop the skills to do these tasks; and managers, who spend much less time monitoring and controlling, can focus on activities that are often neglected, such as strategic planning and staff development. Third, employees who are empowered develop more self-confidence and higher morale. Finally, many of the new organizational forms that are being developed to increase competitiveness, such as self-managed teams, and flatter, less hierarchical organizations, require empowerment to be successful.

Developing this competency does not require much in the way of new skills; it is more a matter of rethinking your approach to management. If your management style has emphasized control — giving orders, making decisions, and monitoring performance, empowerment will require significant change on your part. Unless you build the groundwork for this change, it is likely to be unsuccessful. The danger is that you will share authority, your employees will make poor decisions, you will take back authority, and everyone will be unhappy about what happened.

To successfully empower others, you must build the groundwork for change and implement it gradually by:

• Discussing and clarifying expectations about your new role as a coach and resource provider and the employees’ new roles as responsible and accountable problem solvers and decision makers

• Ensuring that employees get any training they will need

• Ensuring that employees have access to the information they will need

• Providing guidelines, parameters regarding limits of empowerment

• Using leading questions to coach and model the processes of problem solving and decision making

• Recognizing and praising behaviors reflecting responsible decision making and problem solving

• Creating a climate where experimentation is encouraged and mistakes are treated as opportunities for learning

     You can learn more about implementing this competency by talking to someone who has done it successfully and by reading books on this topic.

Talk to an employee or to a group of employees and explain what you would like to do in terms of empowering them. Clarify what your own role will be and what role you would like the employee(s) to have.

Coach a group through a decision making process by asking questions that lead the group through the thinking process required to make a good decision. Use questions like these:

• What are the criteria for a good decision in this case?

• What information do I have that will be needed?

• What additional information do I need, and how can I get it?

• What are the alternatives?

• How should I go about choosing among the alternatives?

• What are the risks associated with each alternative?

Empower an individual or group to make a decision or solve a problem. Be sure you have provided the resources and information needed to do this effectively.

Over a two-week period make a point of noticing and praising behaviors that indicate that your employees are successfully demonstrating empowerment.

After a period in which you have empowered employees to make a certain kind of decision or solve a certain type of problem, lead a debriefing and learning session on a particular decision or problem. Find out what the employee(s) did and how, and ask the group to identify learning points — things that you or they could do differently in the future. Keep the focus on learning, not on blaming.

Periodically ask employees about their perception of how the empowerment process is going. Ask what you can do differently, to make the process more effective.

Interview someone in your own or another organization who has successfully empowered employees. Ask how the person went about the process, what worked and what didn’t, what problems were encountered, and how the person addressed them.

If you are coaching someone who is trying to develop this competency, you can:

• Model the process of empowerment with this person

• Help the person develop a plan for empowerment

• Discuss how the process is going and offer feedback and suggestions

• Assign this person to a team or task force headed by someone strong in empowerment

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS

Brand From the Inside: Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your Employees to Your Business, by Libby Sartain & Mark Schumann. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Empowering Employees, by Kenneth Murrell & Mimi Meredith. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Empowering Leadership: How a Leadership Development Culture Builds Better Leaders Faster, by Michael Fletcher. 224 pages. Thomas Nelson Publisher, 2018.

Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute, by Ken Blanchard, John Carlos, & Eric Conger. 126 pages. San Francisco, CA: Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2001.

Leadership through Empowerment: A Playbook for Leaders, by John Horton. 80 pages. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018

Servant Leadership Roadmap: Master the 12 Core Competencies of Management Success with Leadership Qualities and Interpersonal Skills, by Cara Bramlett. 124 pages. CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2018.

The 3 Keys to Empowerment: Release the Power Within People for Astonishing Results, by Ken Blanchard, John Carlos, Alan Randolph. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2001.

The Coaching Revolution: How Visionary Managers Are Using Coaching to Empower People and Unlock Their Full Potential, by David Logan Ph.D. & John King. Avon, MA: Adams Media Corporation, 2004.

The Culture of Empowerment: How to Champion People, by Steve Backlund. 196 pages. Igniting Hope Ministries, 2016.

The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills At Work, by Peter Block. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1991.

To Lead is to Empower: Leadership to Empower Your Employees and Yourself, by Shar McBee. SMB Publishing Inc., 2003.

The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win, by Dave Ulrich & Wendy Ulrich. United States: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You, by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss. 240 pages. Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.

Zapp!: The Lightning of Empowerment: How to Improve Productivity, Quality, and Employee Satisfaction, by William Byham. 212 pages. Development Dimensions International, 1989

WORKSHOPS & COURSES - PUBLIC, ONSITE, ONLINE

LinkedIn Learning – 191 videos and online courses.
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/search?keywords=empowerment

Achieving Leadership Success Through People. Three days. American Management Association. Tel. 877 566-9441.
http://www.amanet.org/training/seminars/Achieving-Leadership-Success-Through-People.aspx

Create a Respectful Workplace: Improve Morale, Increase Productivity and Achieve Business Goals. Two days. American Management Association. Tel. 877 566-9441
http://www.amanet.org/training/seminars/Create-a-Respectful-Workplace-Improve-Morale-Increase-Productivity-and-Achieve-Business-Goals.aspx

High Performance Leadership: From Control to Empowerment. Achievement Unlimited, Inc. Tel 402 597-1447
http://www.successisahabit.com/high-performance-leadership/

Positive Power and Influence. Three days, Virtual & Live. Situation Management Systems. Tel. 603-897-1200
https://situationmanagementsystems.com/virtual-classroom-open-enrollment.php

See Appendix