Empowerment

This is a post I wrote last year, but it feels more relevant in my life now than at that time. This goes along with my belief that most people do not reach their potential because of their environment.

Think about your favorite companies or feel-good stories about companies.

They are probably a result of empowering their employees. Whether that be a Zappos customer service rep spending almost 11 hours on the phone with a customer or Wendy's fun Twitter account. Often these employees go beyond what their job responsibilities include and add value to the company that could not have been predicted.

One of the biggest initiatives in business is to move towards agile. One of the core aspects of agile is the empowerment of the individuals of the team. Instead of defining every little detailing in the process, team members can make decisions to achieve the product.

Nike's Phil Knight expressed the benefit of empowerment in Shoe Dog: "Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results."

When people feel empowered, they aren't restricted to what their job title and responsibilities state. If they aren't empowered, the environment may lead to an "It's not my job" culture. With a restricted culture, a company may lose any advantage they may have including diversity, skillset, or talent.

Progress often stalls due to decisions that have to be made. When employees aren't empowered to make decisions (whether that be formal processes or culture), there is wasted time while trying to get the "right" person to make the decision (who frequently is the go-to person for many other decisions and queued up). Often there are times of running in circles when there isn't a formal process defined and no one is empowered to make decisions.

When people don't feel empowered, they will ask for every decision to be made by someone else. Any obstacle they encounter, they will try to have someone else to deal with it or expect someone else to tell them exactly what to do and how to do it. On the other hand, empowerment encourages people to overcome any obstacles, even unexpected ones.

So how do you empower people? The environment has to encourage people to do so; rather than punish them. You trust people to make decisions and recognize them when they produce a positive result.

But how one responds to a negative result is as, or even more, crucial to how one responds to a positive result. If someone is reprimanded, others may be hesitant to make decisions in the future. The better way is to find what went wrong and how to deal with similar situations in the future better.

Other benefits include increased satisfaction and performance. This can impact the culture and environment and make it easier to attract top talent.

I think it's natural for humans to do good and often beyond what they were told as long as nothing is stopping them from doing so. I've been pleasantly surprised by so many people when they aren't restricted to the process.

Keep in mind, the concept of empowerment isn't specific to business, but it is for all aspects of life (including how we raise children).

So ask yourself, what can you do to empower those around you? Or what can you do to increase the empowerment in your environment?