How to Lead with Empowerment

Are you finding it hard to get the results you want with your team??

It may be because you are not empowering them.

Most of us are not in offices anymore, and the nine-to-five work demand just doesn’t hold up with the new millennial workforce. People are now working independently, and for many leaders, that can be hard to navigate.?

When managing your team, it’s essential to understand that while management is necessary, empowerment is more effective.?

Empowerment all goes back to trust and letting go of control. The world is changing, and our leadership style needs to change with it.

WHAT IS EMPOWERMENT?

Empowered leadership is giving your team autonomy. If your team is empowered, they know what they need to do and when they need to do it, feel confident in how they will get it done… and you don’t have to tell them.?

When it comes to your team, you must give your people responsibility and authority. If you tell someone to complete a task or a project and they know they have to get it done, but they don’t have the power to go out and get the resources and people they need, then they are going to fall flat, and there’s a good chance that they are going to fail.?

“Research has regularly demonstrated that when employees feel empowered at work, it is associated with stronger job performance, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization.” - Harvard Business Review.

When you loosen your grip a little bit and cut your team some slack, you can instead focus on building trust. You’ll see they will own their projects with integrity when you do this.?

LEADING THE NEW RISING LEADERS

Millennials are becoming the new workforce, and as leaders, we must adapt and learn how to work with millennials if we want our business to stay alive and relevant. Adapting to (and attracting) the rising millennial leaders means understanding what they prioritize and how they are best motivated, inspired, and encouraged.?

Millennials want to be given autonomy and trust. They want to feel empowered to do a job to the best of their ability without being constantly checked in on, micromanaged, or doubted.?

It means they want to be trusted enough to work when and how they want. And that’s why empowered leadership is so important. To meet millennial demands, you have to be able to trust them.?

When every team member has what they need and can work on their project with little to no interference, that’s when you know you’re really leading in a way that’s working.

MANAGEMENT VS. EMPOWERMENT VS. MICROMANAGEMENT

Nobody wants to be micromanaged! That’s why people are leaving their jobs in mass amounts!

The old way of leading (manage and then manage harder if you want things done) just isn’t what the new generation of workers responds well to. While management is necessary, it is not the complete picture. Empowerment is needed to inspire, motivate, engage, and retain your teams.

McKinsey & Company describes the two ends of the spectrum you do not want to find yourself on: “Helicopter bosses tend to manage by exception, maintaining a distance and being mostly hands-off until an employee ‘fails’ or creates cause for concern. In contrast, “Micromanagers seek to stave off failure by being highly involved and controlling most or all of the time. While each might have its place, neither approach is very empowering.”

If you are leading in these ways, it’s time you take a moment to self-reflect and decide if this is how you want to lead your people. Micromanagement and being too controlling are the quickest ways to cause team friction and create unhappy employees.

EMPOWERING YOUR PEOPLE GETS THE RESULTS YOU WANT

Many leaders think that the way to be a better leader is through managing, or worse, micromanaging their team, and that is how they will get the results they want. That may have worked in the past, but the world is changing, and the people we are now leading have changed.

The true way to genuine leadership is by empowering your people. And empowerment starts with trust. And trust is the act of giving responsibility and authority.?

If your entire team is absolutely empowered, you, as the boss, don't even need to show up because, ideally, your team already knows what they need to do, and they don’t need you hanging around to watch them do it.

If you would like to learn more about how you can become an empowering leader and create empowered teams, book me to speak at your next event! As a keynote speaker on leadership, I can help to inspire you and your team to achieve great things.?