Exceptional Empowerment: Keep Your Expertise Involved | #Leadership

Exceptional Empowerment: Do Employees Think They Can’t Ask You?

Empower your employees. This is today’s leadership focus. It develops new talent and prevents micro-managing. 

But how you empower matters. Do your empowered employees believe they must go it alone? Do they think they can’t ask you for your expertise? If you want the results of exceptional empowerment, make it clear it’s OK to collaborate.





Exceptional Empowerment: Image is flying statues.

Exceptional Empowerment: Includes Mentoring & Collaboration Image by Martin Pettitt via Flickr.

Grateful for image by Martin Pettitt via Flickr Creative Commons License.


Exceptional Empowerment Includes Input Collaboration

When leaders first try empowering employees, they often go astray. They mistakenly tell employees to go it alone.



“Don’t ask me. You’re empowered!”


Don’t ask you what? Don’t ask you anything? Are you abandoning them? Perhaps you’ve left something out of that statement. Finish the statement to be clear.


“Don’t ask me for permission. You’re empowered.”

 

Those two extra words, for permission, make a big difference. Empowered employees don’t ask for permission. They ask for input, knowledge, expertise, and perspective. It’s OK to collaborate even with leaders.


Leadership Steps to Exceptional Empowerment

  1. Define empowerment as development and sharing power — not delegation. Delegation doesn’t empower. It assigns responsibility. The delegators still have the power. Those delegated to represent those doing the delegating. This is not empowerment.

    Development suggests learning and growth. It shares power through knowledge and collaboration.


  2. Mentor. Leaders, empower employees with your knowledge and experience. Don’t go from micro-managing to abandonment. Mentor through questions instead of leading with commands.


  3. Help empowered employees see the difference between exploring and struggling. Throwing employees into the deep end totally unprepared creates struggle. Sharing your knowledge empowers employees’ exploration. The former can leave unproductive scars. The latter fuels greatness.




From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

Related Posts:
Teamwork Collaboration: Leadership Beliefs That Kill It
The True Cost of Fake Empowerment

©2014-2017 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.


Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.


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