Empowerment is a very important and interesting aspect of Management. An action that plays a vital role in building teams, creating ownership and accountability within people, resulting in success of the team/project/organization.
From my experience, "Empowerment" is a very loosely used word, Managers think, they can empower people by...
- making an individual or a team responsible for a certain task
- giving an individual the power to take a decision
- giving an individual the authority to take a financial decision
This is not enough and this is not all.
In my opinion, true Empowerment comes from creating
- a good feeling for the team/organization: "I FEEL GOOD" Factor
- a sense of belonging in the organization/team: "I BELONG HERE" Factor
- an awareness of the vision and imparting knowledge: "I KNOW WHAT TO DO" factor
When people are empowered in the "True Sense", they demonstrate a sense of Responsibility, Ownership and Accountability for a task/project. They demonstrate initiative. They are proactive. The war is theirs and they celebrate each victory in a battle, however small the battle is. There is energy everywhere, people help each other, share knowledge and stay late just because their colleague is having a difficulty in his/her task. People come forward to ask for more work a week ahead.
This is not all, the organization starts seeing a difference, the defects are low, the customers are happy resulting in more business. There is prosperity.
I strongly recommend to Managers, to use the following steps to achieve "true" empowerment in their teams/organizations
- Treat people well
- Impart Knowledge
- Bestow responsibility
Treating People Well
This is the first and the most important step in empowerment. "Treating people well" is not always achieved by talking nicely to them or greeting them or accepting anything and everything that an employee has to say.
Managers have to encourage them, inspire them, trust them, listen to them and acknowledge their achievements.
Encouragement comes from saying kind words and being supportive when people are down. Kind words of encouragement fills team members with a strange confidence to do the "undoable". The team member does wonders with his/her task.
A word of caution:
- the maturity of the individual plays a very important role in "Treating people well". An individual with high maturity will respond positively to encouragement and kind words, the ones with low maturity will go around boasting that the Manager is his/her friend and will not hurt him even if he/she makes a mistake. Managers have to study their people's maturity and then act. I have seen admonishment, a bit of embarrassment and then saying the kind words of encouragement works with people with lower maturity levels in most cases.
- High maturity usually results in high commitment in individuals and these kind of people work with good intentions, managers need to be supportive and encouraging, these people feel bad, when they make a mistake, these people usually accept admonishment as a punishment for wrong doing, but they cannot and will not appreciate humiliation or embarrassment. These people will leave the company if they are subjected to humiliation.
Impart Knowledge
Step 2 deals with training people, providing them knowledge, tools and techniques that come handy in day to day activities.
There are two types of Managers who impart knowledge:
- Type 1: Most managers have a unique way of dealing with tasks and situations. These are techniques that they have read in books, used and perfected over time. These managers usually have better success in step 2 of empowerment as they are closer to ground realities, they know more about the project, product and processes and have a better relationship with their teams.
- Type 2: Some managers, however, go by the book. They are better "read" than the "Type 1" managers, they are loosely related to their teams, the project, the product and the processes. These Managers will have a tendency to implement a Six Sigma Technique that was successful in another company, without showing consideration to the current organization, it's maturity, it's people, it's people's maturity or the product requirement. These managers try to implement systems with "Mission Critical robustness" when it is not required, just because some "Guru" appreciated this technique. These Managers have a lower chance at success in imparting knowledge as most people in their team just don't understand what this person is saying or where he is coming from.
Imparting knowledge means, "showing them the way", by telling them:
- What to do
- How to do it
- How to Measure
- Take necessary Actions (based on the measurements to minimize deviations)
- How to Share Knowledge with others in the team
This is a classic Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle first stated by Deming, PLUS knowledge sharing.
Managers need not define everything by themselves, they may get their key team members to participate and define the tasks, the process, measurements and the possible actions to take when deviations occur. This way, the key players themselves will own the process and train others on the process that they defined.
Bestow Responsibility
Once the team members are trained, the Managers must share responsibility of the project along with key players in the team. An announcement must be made to let everyone know, so that other team members know whom to approach, when required. A formal announcement, makes team members proud and gives them a sense of responsibility. Their pride helps them contribute to the project objectives and goals.
Once a person is made responsible, the Manager must stand by this individual under all circumstances. Great leaders acknowledge the success of the individual and make it known to all. A failure is also handled, thru' escalation, and thru' counseling to the individual, reassuring him/her, that this happens and that it can be overcome. The counseling should be kept private.
The act of bestowing responsibility fails when the Manager resorts to "Success is mine and failure is yours" philosophy. In these cases, the person will never accept responsibility from this manager again.
Where managers go wrong is when, they call a certain team member to their office, and tell him/her that he/she is responsible for a certain process and keep the act of bestowing responsibility private. This way, the person never really accepts the responsibility, even if he/she does, he/she does not get the support from other team members to execute the responsibility. This results in frustration and disgruntlement in the employee, he/she is unable to live up to the expectation of his/her manager and the manager holds him/her responsible for the failure, while, the failure is really the Manager's, who could have turned this situation around by merely making an announcement and showing his/her support to the cause.
To Summarize, empowerment, when done properly, works wonders and helps building great teams. Great teams produce great products, great products result in great revenues for the company. The manager must acknowledge success and attribute to individuals and also standby and accept responsibility if things go wrong.
