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This entire article serves to describe and detail the effectiveness of implementing a philosophy of shared leadership involving the practices of accountability, ownership, empowerment and communication.

Empowerment

Empowerment: allowing people at all levels to broaden their scope of decision making to more fully utilize their talents, skills, and inherent creativity.

In a nutshell, empowering workers widens the boundary of individual and team contribution.

PREPARE THE ORGANIZATION FOR EMPOWERMENT: Before initiating any empowerment activity, each member of the organization must be educated about the reasons for change, the manner in which it will take place and the potential positive and negative impact that empowerment will have on them personally.

CREATE TEAMS AND TEAM LEADERS: Empowerment is about relationships, not systems. Teams must be formed with assigned team leaders and all individuals in the organization must be a part of at least one team. Teams should be small, based on job function and representative of all aspects of diversity.

IDENTIFY INDIVIDUAL VALUES: As a part of the team formation process, individuals should be helped to see the role that personal and professional values have in the workplace. Team members should then be guided in identifying the values they feel should be a part of all job-related interaction.

REACH TEAM VALUES CONSENSUS: After individuals have identified the values that are important to them personally, a facilitated process is necessary in order to allow each team to agree on a set of values that represent them as should then be used to govern team behaviors.

CREATE VALUE BASED BEHAVIOR COMMITMENTS: The ultimate goal of this activity is for the entire organization to arrive at a single set of behaviors based on individual and team values which will provide the moral compass for all future internal and customer service activities.

ESTABLISH A PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION METHODOLOGY: The ultimate purpose of team formation is to establish a communication link between each individual and the organizational change process. The critical reason for this link is to encourage everyone to identify workplace and customer service issues in need of change.

MAKE SOLUTIONS IN ORGANIZATIONAL REALITY: All team generated problems and solutions must be addressed by management. Those solutions which are not seen as appropriate require feedback to the team as to why and those which are appropriate should be implemented with credit given to those responsible.

Employee empowerment is a two sided coin. For employees to be empowered, management must want and believe that employee empowerment makes good business sense and employees must act.  Let us be clear about one thing immediately, employee empowerment does not mean that management no longer has the responsibility to lead the organization and is not responsible for performance.  If anything the opposite is true. Stronger leadership and accountability is demanded in an organization that seeks to empower employees.

This starts with the executive leadership, through all management levels and includes front line supervisors.  It is only when the entire organization is willing to work as a team that the real benefits of employee empowerment are realized.

For an organization to practice and foster employee empowerment, management must trust and communicate with employees.  Employee communication is one of the strongest signs of employee empowerment.  Honest and repeated communication from elements of the strategic plan, key performance indicators, financial performance, down to daily decision making.

If an organization has not been actively cultivating employee empowerment, it may take considerable time and effort before employees start to respond.  Often the first efforts and communications are met with employee derision and mockery.  Those who are only interested in trying the latest management fad will give up when met with this response. A good rule of thumb for communications to employees is to enumerate what management considers adequate and then multiple by a factor of ten.  When considering employee understanding and acceptance of decisions consider how long it takes for the management team to discuss and then make a decision.  Allow several multiples of this time for employees to think about the issue.

For management wanting employee empowerment the evidence will not come across the board with wide spread acceptance.  A small number will accept the invitation to become more involved, say 3-5 per cent.  The rest will be watching every move to see what happens. Every communication, decision and action by management will be viewed as either supporting a move to employee empowerment or not. Probably nothing demonstrates the commitment or lack of commitment to employee empowerment more than promotions and selection for leadership positions. Employees know those that attempt to “shine up while dumping down”.

For an organization to enjoy the returns from employee empowerment the leadership must diligently work to create the work environment where it is obvious to all that employee empowerment is desired, wanted and cultivated.  Management’s responsibility is to create the environment for employee empowerment.

When organizational leadership has started to take actions to encourage employee empowerment it is then up to the employees to decided if they wish to take advantage of the opportunity or not.  It is not unusual for only a small minority to accept the challenge initially.  Also it is very likely that some fraction will never respond. It is the large middle group that must be convinced to practice employee empowerment.

It is this author’s conviction that most organizations have exactly the level of employee empowerment the management wants. This is demonstrated by the amount of communications,  level of training provided employees, opportunities for personal growth, the solicitation and implementation of ideas, the recognition and reward system,  promotion and advancement criteria, and uncountable little signals from management that demonstrate whether employees are valued or not.

This article has six (6) parts in its entirety. Part four (4) of this article is entitled “Managing Everybody Else: Shared Leadership – Ownership and Communication”.

Image by Lincolnian (Brian) via Flickr