Ever get the impression that you spend more time checking on your gang’s work and even making decisions for them? Never fear, there’s an exit ramp ahead to get out of this vicious traffic jam: give the power to the people!
According to Forbes, employees who feel empowered are both more committed and more successful in what they do. In fact, more autonomous and responsible employees find more meaning and purpose in their work, and that impacts the entire company’s performance. Rather than just going through the motions, they gain pride in their work, which in turn reduces turnover.
So, what’s the secret to empowering your employees? Managers, listen up: in this article, we reveal 7 tried and tested techniques to help you do just that.
1. Align teams around your purpose
Empowering employees starts by explaining where you want to go. This is where the purpose statement comes in. More than just a mere financial goal, the purpose statement refers to the ideal you’d like to achieve, and the impact you want to have on the people and environment around you.
To find it, all you have to do is ask yourself the same question, over and over again: why?
- Why does your company exist?
- Why did you get up this morning?
- Why should this interest other people?
As Simon Sinek explains in this TEDx conference, customers aren’t interested in who you are or even what you do. They want to know why you do it. That same “why” goes for all your employees! So, make sure you communicate your raison d’être internally, because that’s what’s going to align your teams and elevate their motivation.
2. Clarify roles and responsibilities
Transparency is another essential prerequisite for empowering your employees. The more easily accessible information is, the easier it becomes for employees to make decisions without having to ask 11 coworkers.
This transparency is particularly important when it comes to roles. So, before giving your employees more responsibilities, take time to talk about clarity:
- What are the roles, and what is expected of each?
- What responsibilities and key performance indicators (KPIs) are associated with each role?
- Which roles make which decisions, and who consults who on which issues?
The easiest way to clearly visualize these roles is to create a role map. The Holaspirit platform allows you to do just that, with a dynamic organization chart and customizable role sheets.
3. Involve employees in setting objectives
Now that your employees have a clearer picture of the organization’s purpose and roles, it’s time to (seriously) empower them! Oh—and rather than setting your team’s objectives on your own, ask your team to help you! One method is particularly effective for this: OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).
The OKR method enables you to link team and employee objectives to those of your company, giving them greater meaning. These must be ambitious and measurable with key figures. For example, if your objective is to empower your employees, one of your key results could be to increase by 50% the number of decisions taken without the manager’s intervention.
Your employees will be more likely to get involved in a project if they’re the ones who propose it in the first place. Get them to brainstorm and come up with their own solutions; this will help empower them.
4. Promote psychological safety
To empower employees, you need to create an environment that encourages autonomy and initiative. In other words, you need to promote psychological safety. This term refers to an employee’s ability to take a reasonable amount of risk and share opinions without fear of repercussions.
Fostering psychological safety means allowing employees to make mistakes from time to time—and even encourage a little good old trial and error. This gives employees the confidence to suggest ideas and make decisions on their own.
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Creating a feedback culture is essential not only to empower employees, but also to encourage them to continuously improve. Indeed, according to Gallup, employees who receive daily feedback from their manager are 3.6 times more likely to give their all at work.
Feedback doesn’t just have to come from managers. Employees, too, need to give constructive, routine feedback to the people they work with.
To be constructive, feedback must be:
- precise: it must provide clear and useful information about the employee’s work
- objective: based on facts or actions taken, not on impressions or emotions
- targeted: given at the right time to the right person
Remember to emphasize the positive as well as the negative, and to congratulate your colleagues when they do their work well.
6. Encourage skills development
The more comfortable an employee is in his or her job, the more responsibility and autonomy he or she can gain. To empower your employees, you need to… support them as they develop their skills!
Here are three steps to get you there:
- Identify skills gaps within your team by comparing the skills the company needs with the actual skills of your employees.
- Create customized training plans to close identified skills gaps, and integrate them into each employee’s individual OKRs.
- Set up a regular performance evaluation system to ensure that your training serves a purpose.
7. Adopt an empowering management model
Many organizations continue to operate with a highly hierarchical management style that limits team autonomy and initiative. Yet there’s no shortage of alternatives to the hierarchical model! Think outside the pyramid:
- Sociocracy: Popularized in the 1970s, sociocracy gives a voice to all employees and includes them in decision-making. It is a very popular model in associations and schools.
- Holacracy: Developed in the 2000s, this model empowers employees by creating self-organized teams with clear roles and decision-making based on consent.
- Teal: This paradigm stems from Frédéric Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations. It’s based on three guiding principles: self-managed teams, a state of wholeness that allows you to be 100% yourself, and an evolving purpose (that you continuously adapt to your environment).
With these governance models, you can determine who is responsible for what, who makes which decisions, and how work is organized within the organization. This creates the ideal framework for empowering your employees.
In any operation, making fundamental organizational changes are no trivial matter. To make them work, it’s important to not only get the right support, but also to implement the right tools. For example, the Holaspirit self-management platform is ideal for improving transparency and team agility. And it’s compatible with a wide range of organizational models!
Want to find out more about the different models and tools you can implement to empower your teams? Schedule a call with one of our experts 📞
A final word
There you have it: empowering employees is essential to improving autonomy, commitment, productivity, and talent retention. To achieve this, start by communicating your purpose statement and mapping out roles and responsibilities: this allows everyone to keep their eyes on the prize. Involve your employees more in setting goals and making decisions. Create a culture of trust, feedback, and continuous improvement. Finally, don’t forget the combo of organizational model + coaching + tools: this is THE key to adopting empowering management for the long haul.
Want to find out more about innovative organizational models that empower employees? Download our white paper full of expert advice and testimonials👇
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In our white paper “The Ultimate Guide to Organizational Models,” you’ll get: a comprehensive overview of innovative organizational models (like Agile, Teal, Holacracy, Constitutional Management, and more), testimonials from pioneer organizations that have successfully adopted it, best practices for choosing, implementing and measuring the effectiveness of our model, as well as digital tools to facilitate the transition.
