In a Nutshell
It's very difficult for
managers to create a situation where their employees experience psychological
empowerment, but the payoff is great for those who achieve it. Empowerment
involves preparing your staff by boosting their confidence and competence,
and by communicating a clear vision and goals. So many things must
be in place for a person to really feel empowered, and what works for one
employee might not work for another. On top of those challenges,
many managers have difficulty finding time to focus on the needs of their
employees because their jobs are so hectic. Nevertheless, empowerment
is worth the effort. Effective empowerment of your staff can lead
to higher levels of customer responsiveness and innovation, higher levels
of employee motivation and satisfaction, lower levels of stress for employees,
higher levels of employee skill development, and better time management
for managers.
In This Issue
Be Systematic and Consistent
Effective empowerment involves
planning and a long-term commitment. Delegating makes just about
every list of time management tips, and it absolutely can be an effective
way for managers to boost their personal productivity. However, effective
empowerment is no quick fix. For empowerment to be most effective,
the objective for managers and their employees must be one of incrementally
building the employees' competence. It's counterproductive to dump
duties and responsibilities on employees without forethought and preparation
just to get them off your desk. Employees may see that as disorganization,
poor time management or shirking of duties. It takes careful planning
to get a $20K/year staffer to happily accept responsibility for an ever-increasing
number of the duties of his $50K/year manager!
Develop Their
Competence and Confidence
Two major components of
getting subordinates ready to have tasks delegated to them are boosting
their knowledge and skill levels and helping them to feel competent.
This means that managers who want to empower their staff must be trainers.
Some of the keys to effectively teaching adults include (a) telling them
what they will be learning and why, (b) providing information and demonstrations,
(c) allowing opportunities for practice, and (d) providing feedback on
performance.
Confidence in one's abilities
comes from successful performances, observing others perform successfully,
and encouragement. By having subordinates learn to perform a big
task one piece at a time, managers can increase their subordinates' confidence
in their abilities, which helps them progress toward becoming proficient
with the entire task. Having the chance to watch others successfully
perform a task also tends to boost confidence. Hence, having good
role models can assist the empowerment process. Words of encouragement
can increase employees' confidence as well, so managers should commend
employees' progress as they learn.
Communicate a
Clear Vision and Goals
Once employees have developed
the competence and confidence necessary for effective empowerment, they
need to have a clear sense of leadership's vision and the goals for their
performance. The vision helps employees understand how and why their
work is meaningful.
The best visions are mental
pictures of an ideal future state that are vivid, ambitious and exciting.
A shared vision helps a team coordinate their efforts, because it unifies
team members' priorities. When your employees understand and embrace
your vision, they're in a good position to spontaneously seize opportunities
to do things that bring you closer to the realization of that vision.
Promoting that kind of constructive spontaneity is one of the major reasons
for empowering employees.
While a vision can be a
rich and complex picture of a desired future state, it also helps to set
specific goals en route to that vision. As the October
5 LeaderLetter notes, SMART goals tend to lead to the highest
levels of performance.
Delegate Effectively
Competent and confident
employees who know your vision and your goals for their performance are
ready to accept additional authority. Effective delegation of authority
gives employees a sense that they have the necessary clout and support
to do the tasks assigned to them. It also contributes to a sense
of autonomy and self-determination. The October
10 LeaderLetter addresses effective delegation. To delegate
effectively, you must �
In Summary ...
Creating a situation in
which employees will feel and act psychologically empowered is very complex,
and it requires a lot of planning and communicating. This is particularly
difficult for managers who have many direct reports or who have difficulty
finding time in their schedules to focus on developing their staff.
Empowerment requires boosting their confidence and competence, and communicating
a clear vision and goals. However, the payoffs associated with psychological
empowerment justify the time invested. Effective empowerment of your
staff can lead to higher levels of customer responsiveness and innovation,
higher levels of employee motivation and satisfaction, lower levels of
stress for employees, higher levels of employee skill development, and
better time management for managers.
Note
1. Bouchette, Ed.
(2002, October). Bradshaw: "It's Great to be Home." Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, October 20, p. C1.
Photo Credit
REUTERS/David DeNoma:
e-mailed to me from Yahoo! News (news.yahoo.com).
Source
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett,
R. C. & Curphy, G. J. (1999). Leadership: Enhancing
the Lessons of Experience. New York: Irwin McGraw-Hill.
About the Newsletter
and Subscriptions
LeaderLetter is written
by Dr. Scott Williams, Department of Management, Raj
Soin College of Business, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.
It is a supplement to my MBA 751 - Managing People in Organizations class.
It is intended to reinforce the course concepts and maintain communication
among my former MBA 751 students, but anyone is welcome to subscribe.
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Let's keep the conversation going.
Rules for chopping your own wood:
1. Never park down hill of a tree you are cutting.
2. When in doubt, park twice as far from the tree as the tree
is tall.
3. Living within driving distance of a forest does not make you
a lumberjack.
4. Always use the neighbors truck.