Empowering Your Team, Empowers Yourself
By Trevor Stasik
For Arizona project managers, and organization leaders, empowerment is an essential ingredient. It may be the one thing that leverages your teams for success and transformation in an organization. Unfortunately, I don't know that it gets enough of the attention that it deserves. Empowerment is a powerful tool not just for those that are working on your teams, but also for those that are working to lead teams.
Empowerment is the tool that allows you to expand your horizons as a leader because you can feel confident that the work is getting done by those that can do the work best. Empowerment isn't the norm; it isn't the average. A lot of companies and leaders pay it lip service, but they never see the gains because they don't embrace it. I struggle with it myself. It's tough to let someone else do their own thing, especially if you think that you would have done it differently. However, if you nitpick over every choice your team makes, you will turn them off from making valuable contributions. Odds are that your teams can get better results by doing the things that you aren't doing.
Work hard to build the relationships, and to build trust within your teams; so that when you let them off the chain, they feel safe to roam freely. Even if they chase that rabbit into a rabbit hole, everything will still be okay. Let them run. Let them play.
Let your team members drive their own meetings. When you ask your team a question, pause. Wait for an answer. Listen. Listen - Don't respond. Practice actual listening. I'm not saying active listening - I'm saying actual listening. Too often active listening is treated like simply parroting back what someone else said. Actual listening is understanding with empathy.
One interesting way I've heard empowerment described is that it's not just about letting people make their own decisions about how accomplish their work. Empowerment is about appreciating differences. It's about getting comfortable with team members making decisions that are different from you, and having their back regardless of the outcome. Yes, there is an element of accountability, but empowerment also means getting comfortable if your people make the wrong decision, and letting them learn from it. Stop over-reacting. People can get the job done differently, and still get the work done - probably even better than you
Empowerment can be leveraged so that you as a leader can get more done. You simply don't have enough time in the day to be able to micromanage, let alone manage, the ongoing details of detailed work. It's okay for that font to not exactly match. Let it go… It's okay for your worker to use a different tool to get the same work done...
Unless it's something that is a contractual issue, or going to permanently cripple you, let it go. You've got bigger fish to fry. Oh, and none of these concepts are original to me.
Ultimately, are your teams comfortable putting out their best work? If you have a team that is fearful of the consequences in moving forward without your input, or without your express approval, then they are also going to be holding back on giving you their best work. Their best ideas will never be verbalized. They will never come to life. At least not for you. So get out there today, and start empowering your team. When your teams are empowered, you will feel empowered too.
