Guest post: This article is featured on the CTC Job Board. An excerpt is included here.
By David Bingley CPCC, ACC
In-Vision Coaching
I was a middle manager in an International Hospitality Company when I first heard about “Empowerment” in my workplace as a norm. From the meetings I attended in the leadup to the rollout filled me with dread. In the sense that we as a leadership team were only paying lip service to the process and had either no intention of taking it seriously or did not have any idea as to how it would work successfully. There was a lot of assumption and very little self-awareness as to how we operated.
In truth, I had my suspicions that we, as a whole, would fail to uphold the spirit of empowerment on day 1 but did not realize how fast we would fail or the impact it would have on teams moving forward.
The Rules of Empowerment
• The first thing we need to do with Empowerment is to honor that we are working in that space.
• The second thing we need to do is to know that in the Empowerment space there will be some poor choices being made which may impact income, brand image, customer satisfaction etc…
• The third thing we need to do is to accept that as the pain and learning process for all involved.
The Framework of Empowerment
• Once we have a flash point, whenever that is in the process, we need to celebrate that we have a winner. A winner in the sense that someone made a decision, then chose a course of action and we must honor and support that.
• Then we need to decide if we must take over the process and with the person who made the decision take remedial action.
• Then either ask the decision maker what they think they should do next to rectify the solution or as a mentor guide them through your thought process to rectify the issue.
Empowerment is a space which takes courage, practice and commitment from the manager or leader. It will pay dividends with your team in a short space of time.