A few weeks ago I was sitting at a restaurant watching waiters step around

some food that was spilled on the floor. This went on for almost 10 minutes
before the restaurant manager came out with a mop and bucket to clean up
the spill. I am fairly certain that cleaning the floors is not part of the
restaurant manager’s job description.

The incident reminded me of how much I loved having dinner with my family
when we had teenagers. As soon as they would finish their meals, they would
excuse themselves and exit quickly from the dining room only to hear their
mother say, “Pick up your dishes!”

As a manager, do you sometimes feel like your employees are acting like
teenagers? They focus on their part of the job, but rarely identify the work
around the edges or the messes that need to be cleaned up. What can you do to
create more empowerment and accountability in your team so that team
members move from talking about their work, their job and their goals to our
work, our project and our objectives? What can you do to help avoid the
never-ending excuse making when deadlines are missed and to have an
employee acknowledge, “I missed the deadline; it’s all on me!” Having
employees who feel accountable and empowered creates a much more
pleasant and productive workplace.

Watch on Forbes:

To confirm the impact of empowerment, I looked at data from more than

7,000 employees where we measured empowerment along with employee
engagement. Employees who felt a low level of empowerment were rated with
engagement at the 24th percentile, whereas those with a high level of
empowerment were at the 79th percentile. Clearly, empowerment counts.
PROMOTED
What Creates Empowerment In A Team?

To answer that question, I looked at data from three different organizations

compromising approximately 19,000 employees. I identified the items most
strongly correlated with empowerment and then factor-analyzed the data to
identify the six factors that were common across the three organizations.

1. Openness To New Ideas. When a work group manager is open and

inviting about new ideas and opinions from team members, empowerment
was significantly better. Often when employees come forward with new ideas
the thing that people often hear from their manager is either, “If I wanted your
opinion, I would have asked for it,” or “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will take that under
consideration.” The first response is simply expressing, “we don’t want or
value your opinion.” The second is when managers that pretend to care and
listen but never do anything with your idea. Both behaviors discourage
empowerment. People will sometimes have excellent ideas and other times
will have stupid ideas. Either way, taking the time to respectfully listen sends
the message that people are valued and respected. Being open and inviting
ideas from others will increase empowerment in your team.

2. Developing Others. If your employees never have good ideas, it’s

possible that they lack knowledge, skills, expertise or experience. These people
need to develop new skills. There is a very strong correlation between the
emphasis a team has on development and high empowerment. Developing
team members sends a message that employees are valued and the
organization is willing to invest in them as people.

3. Supportive And Trusted Manager. The skills of a manager to gain the

respect and support of the team members was another critical factor. If
employees trusted their manager and felt the manager “had their back” and
would support them, employees were more likely to feel empowered. We also
found that when managers were effective in two-way communication and
willing to make changes, these skills generated greater empowerment.
Empowerment requires extra effort and energy from employees. When there
is a low level of trust in a team leader, employees resist empowerment.

4. Recognition, Rewards And Encouragement. Those things that are

rewarded are repeated. Empowerment requires team members to make some
effort and take some risks. Those leaders who recognize and encourage
employees when they see extra effort or risk taking get more of that behavior
in the future. Leaders who were effective at showing appreciation had higher
empowerment scores. Some teams are a recognition desert. I have often asked
groups who among them recognize team members too often or show too much
appreciation? Most people managers don’t recognize and reward others often
enough.

5. Positive Work Environment. When the work environment was positive,

where people felt valued and respected, empowerment was higher. When the
work environment was full of conflict, where everything was a crisis and there
was lots of finger pointing or blaming empowerment was much lower. Most
everyone can identify a negative work environment versus a positive
environment. Leaders need to bring a positive attitude to work and a desire to
create a great working environment.

6. Giving Team Members Authority. When a team member has the

authority to make a decision, they feel more empowerment. If they make a
decision that gets reversed by their manager, the empowerment dissipates.
Leaders need to make sure that employees are skilled and knowledgeable
enough to make a good decision before they are given authority. The more
control people have over their work and how it is done, the higher their sense
of empowerment.

Empowerment impacts the engagement of the team, but it also impacts

productivity. A study from Zenger Folkman found that only 4% of employees
are willing to give extra effort when empowerment is low but 67% as willing
when empowerment is high. The discretionary effort of employees
(willingness of employees to give extra effort) has a significant impact on
productivity. As a leader, the other major benefit of having a highly
empowered team is that you get to work with a group of satisfied people who
are willing work hard. It’s the best of all outcomes. Who wouldn’t want to
strive for this goal?