Empowering Your Team Through Leadership
Even the most junior members of the workforce know that empowered employees deliver greater outcomes.
If you ask any member of an organisation, at any level, no one wants to be micromanaged. However, enforcing conformity is basically the same thing. Conformity dis-empowers, discourages and demotivates even the best employees. The best Leaders empower their people, create an inclusive culture and engage in open communication giving their team a choice on how they complete their work.
As an Empowered Leader you know:
Establishing expectations, and ensuring employees understand where to focus their energy works best;
Allowing your team to make meaningful contributions is a powerful feeling;
Collaborating with your team to establish possible solutions to situations creates motivation;
Allowing a member of your team to make the final decision(s) is Choice. Choice feels like control. Control is power;
Engaging in candid conversations before making decisions opens up dialog;
Providing and seeking regular feedback creates good relationships;
Your decisions will not always be liked, however you need to embrace the need to have influence and impact.
To lead by example. Walk the walk, talk the talk.
Often when you are trying to lead a dis-empowered team it’s difficult to identify contributing factors. Disempowered leadership is not necessarily deliberate. Some become Leaders young and feel like it is the only way to enforce respect. Others may find themselves leading former colleagues and need to change the relationship they once had. However it happens, employees feel dis-empowered when Leaders:
Exclude the team from the decision-making processes (elitism makes Leaders feel powerful and the team feel like outsiders).
Make them feel like they do not matter by disregarding or ignoring experience, expertise, and talent.
Create an ‘us and them’ culture between Senior employees and the team.
Develop processes and procedures without collaborating with, or seeking input from, the team.
At FiveSeven Consulting we have specialist Organisational Development Consultants that can provide mentoring, recommendations and facilitate an end-to-end process to empower leaders and teams to feel empowered and create a great culture. For more information on how we can help you and your team, contact us at solve@fiveseven.com.au.
