Empowering management

An empowering project leader:

• rejects rigid and controlling hierarchy
• supports team members in handling their responsibilities autonomously
• motivates team members to internalize project goals

Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership (Oreilly)

Empowerment in practice

Empowered employees are:

• encouraged to establish their daily work schedule
• tasks with training new employees
• empowered to handle customer service issues
• entrusted with dealing with vendors
• cross-trained to fill multiple roles
• asked to prepare or analyze administrative reports
• empowered in self-managed work teams

Benefits of empowered teams

By empowering your team members, you, as a project leader, can spend less time organizing, directing, checking, and assessing. By allowing your team members to self-manage, you get to spend more time focusing on planning and executing. Employees are able to identify inefficiencies better than managers because they are closer to the work.

• Higher efficiency
• Better customer service
• Higher job satisfaction
• More motivated employees

The origins of empowered teams in Japan

Creating empowered teams

• Establish an accountability process and a strong communication process
• Hire forward-thinking, competent employees
• Spend a lot of time nurturing, communicating, and mentoring, so that they are able to make good decisions
• Reward them for the work they’ve done and the correct decisions they’ve made
• When things go wrong, focus on the solution and let them be accountable for providing the solution