How to Empower your Team

What is empowerment?

In its simplest form, empowerment is giving someone the authority or power to do something. It can also mean making someone stronger and more confident in whatever they are doing.?

Personal empowerment is about?taking control of your own life, and making positive decisions based on what you want. It's closely linked to attributes like self-esteem and self-confidence, but true empowerment comes when you convert intention into action.

On the flip side, what is disempowerment? This is depriving or removing power or authority to do something. This is telling someone exactly what to do and how to do it, leaving no room for decision making on their part. Seems effective and clear, but put yourself in their shoes. Do you like always being told exactly what to do and how? Or do you enjoy the flexibility of using your knowledge and experience to achieve a desired outcome? That's the big difference between empowering someone to take charge and assuming they cannot and providing each little step for them.

Modeling empowerment

Ever hear the phrase "do as I say, not as I do?" This phrase is filled with disempowering language. A more effective way to lead is to model empowerment yourself. In turn, those you empower will follow your lead. Modeling desired behaviors is a powerful tool in leading others.?

Consider this: you want your child to read more books, but all they see is you on the couch scrolling on your phone. They want to do what you do, you are the example they see of how to do life. So what do they do? They grab a tablet or watch TV because that's what they see. What do you think happens when you pick up a book and put down your phone? I share this as a personal story. My son has started observing me reading a book almost every evening. He now reads each night before bed with his trusty booklight and nearly bankrupted me buying books at his school book fair. That's the power of modeling behavior.

How can you apply this to your life, your job? What behaviors can you model to influence others to pick up a desired behavior? Want your peers or team to use the camera for meetings? Turn your camera on. Want your team to provide ideas and solutions to challenges? Throw ideas out there and ask for feedback. Want your team to be more vocal? Use empowering language to encourage and empower them to speak up.

Examples of Empowering Language

Here are some ways you can use empowering language to encourage learning, critical thinking and creativity in others.

1-Our goal is to provide clear instructions to customers on what to expect when they buy from us. What are some ways we can accomplish this??

2-A business partner has asked for us to analyze this data to determine if there are any trends that we can address. How would you suggest we provide this information? Let's get together and review the results, I'd like to hear what you found.

3-I noticed that this claim was paid with an incorrect amount, can you walk me through your thought process on paying this claim?

All of these examples, whether it's completing a task, determine a process improvement, or talking about a mistake allow for an empowering conversation to occur between two people. If these statements were flipped to disempowering, what could they look like? Here are some examples.

1-We are not providing clear instructions to our customers. Please ensure you are providing status, the 5 steps the customer needs to know, and what they need to do next, along with your contact information if they have questions.?

2-I need you to review this data and provide me with trends that you find. I need to review it before you send it back out to make sure that it's correct.?

3- This claim was paid incorrectly and?will be reflected in your audit. In the future, please ensure you are following all the steps to make correct payments.??

Final Thoughts

After reading through the examples, you'll notice that disempowering language isn't always delivered in a negative or mean way. Saying please and being kind with a message can still be disempowering because of the words you use.?

Tips for empowering others (you can use these with your peers, leaders, direct reports, and your family and friends)

• Be ok with mistakes, they are a great opportunity for learning.?
• Come to a conversation with a result or outcome in mind and use that conversation to ask for ideas on how to achieve that outcome.?
• Acknowledge positive traits. Saying that someone is amazing is very general, instead try "you have great attention to detail" or "you are so empathetic with our customers".
• Be constructive with your feedback. Instead of "you made this mistake, don't make it again" use "you did this part great, but this fell a little short, what can you do differently next time?"
• Engage with others in conversation and listen to understand,?limiting discussing your own ideas and desires.