5 Tips to Empower Your Team

Employers often times want to empower their employees, but they don’t always know quite how to go about it. Empowering employees is crucial to the survival, expansion and growth of your business. It not only creates employee satisfaction but increases productivity and morale. Here are five tips to empower your employees.

1. Ask for input. It can be hard to ask for ideas and suggestions from staff members if your department isn’t used to working together on projects as a team. But, who knows your customers better than the employees who interact with them on a daily basis? And for internal issues, employees are in the midst of the daily activities and can contribute valuable information for making things better. These employees know what will work both internally and externally to make everyone happy. By allowing all your employees to actively add input, you will not only add value to your clients, but you will add value to your staff as well.
2. Reinforce with positive feedback. Make sure your employees know when they have done a job well. Many employers may avoid consistently giving positive feedback to employees because they believe employees are just doing their jobs and shouldn’t require recognition. However, employees often become unmotivated when they hear only negative feedback. Employees who feel respected and valued within their departments will perform better on their tasks and are more likely to stay loyal to your company.
3. Designate leaders. It is important to delegate projects and tasks to individual employees and give them authority over specific projects because it gives them a sense of value within the organization. They begin to see the goals of the company more clearly and feel more a part of the process. Assign projects to high-performing employees and make them leaders on individual tasks. This will not only help alleviate your own workload, but it also gives your employees an opportunity to shine.
4. Mentor your employees. The most successful companies are the ones that invest in their most valuable assets, their people. Investing in your employees’ developmental growth not only benefits them, but it also benefits your company. Instead of focusing on just being their boss or managing your team, try being your employees’ mentor. Focus on coaching them to success. Help them achieve not only the department or company goals, but their personal career goals as well. Find out where they want to be in the next year, or even five years, and help them achieve their goals by giving them the tools they need to develop and become successful.
5. Encourage open communication. Make sure that you clearly communicate your goals, projects and ideas, and encourage your employees do the same. Establish an environment where employees are comfortable expressing their comments and feel free to experiment with new ideas. Encourage your employees to contribute in brainstorming activities and commend them for their feedback. This will generate new ideas and establish a more team-oriented atmosphere.

Empowering your employees doesn’t have to be difficult. By following these five tips, you will start to see a difference in your employees’ attitudes, improved respect among co-workers and an increase in productivity. Employers will also see leaders rising to the challenges of more responsibility and a sense of ownership and pride in their employees’ work.

Comments

[Lettie A. Davis]

Express Personnel Service’s attempts to excite the leader in me with “…you will start to see a difference in your employees’ attitudes, improved respect among co-workers and an increase in productivity (para l )” really motivates me to employ the techniques in the article 5 Tips to Empower Your Team but my question is can I motivate peers in this way? Should I employ these techniques as a subordinate? If I am not paid to perform these functions why motivate anyone else but myself? As a MLM I can step forward satisfying any desires to motivate and produce but I am afraid, literally, to perform at entry level and or low wages. Lad 1/26/08

[Mike Aoki]

Hi Jennifer,

I loved your article on Empowering Employees. It important to reinforce with positive feedback.

I'd also like to add another tip: if you want to empower your employees, it’s important to reward risk taking.

If you don’t want people taking big risks, provide parameters in terms of medium sized risks. Then, encourage their initiative and reward their accomplishments.

Mike Aoki

http://www.reflectivekeynotes.com

[Jennifer]

Lettie
I would say yes! Use these techniques with your peers. By encouraging others to rise to the challenge, you will not only show that you are a valuable asset to the team and a team player, but you will inevitably show your leadership skills – and others will notice that. I would say that great managers lead by example, encouragement and open-mindedness. People want to follow those who show them respect and validation for a job well done, no matter what their title. So, whether you’re the CFO of a major company, or an entry level employee, inspire those around you and watch the change take place.

Jennifer

[Jennifer]

Thanks Mike on the comment. I agree with your additional tip. Encouraging employees to think outside of the box and then letting them run with their idea shows that you care about their personal successes and professional growth. Whether their risk taking pays off or not, it's important to let them try and then reward them for their initiative. I'm a firm believer that you learn through both failure and success.

Thanks again!
Jennifer

[Mike Aoki]

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for your reply to my comments. I agree: you learn through both failure and success.

Also, I've mentioned your blog entry on my blog at http://reflectivekeynotes.wordpress.com

You wrote a great article! So, I hope this encourages my readers to read it.

Best wishes and have a great weekend,

Mike

[James Roger]

Very nice posting very informative thanks for sharing

[Matt Hall]

I think "Mentoring Employees" is the one that is the most lacking today, at least from my experience. Even when there shouldn't be, there is often some of the Us VS Them mentality between a group of employees and their manager(s). I think people will get farther by sharing their power through mentorship rather than by hording it.