Business Leadership 4: Empower People to Achieve the Vision

This continues our series exploring leadership roles and traits in small-business

Once leaders establish a clear vision for the business and align the staff to the vision, leaders must empower their staff to achieve the vision. Researchers and authors compiled principles, theories, and practices on empowering people. Empowered employees work with less supervision or control to accomplish what their managers want them to accomplish. On the other hand, employees that lack power ask more questions, need more handling, and frequently fail to act on the vision.

Jeff Thompson’s a Sense of Callings Empowers

Jeff Thompson and J. Stuart Bunderson wrote an award-winning article The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-Edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work. They found that you can empower your employees by helping them:

• Sense their occupation as a calling
• Relate their occupational calling to the perceived meaningfulness of their work
• Perceive a social importance of their work and occupation to their calling
• Believe that faithful execution of one’s work is a moral duty
• Believe their work is a moral duty worthy of a sacrifice for their work
• Perceive that your business also has a morally related duty to the work

Susan Heathfield’s 10 Principles of Employee Empowerment

Susan M. Heathfield wrote Top 10 Principles of Employee Empowerment. Her article contains wonderful links to a score of additional references. She highlights

• Demonstrate that you value people
• Share leadership vision
• Share goals and direction
• Trust people
• Provide information for decision making
• Delegate authority and impact opportunities, not just more work
• Provide frequent feedback
• Solve problems
• Listen to learn and ask questions to provide guidance
• Help employees feel rewarded and recognized for empowered behavior

Entrepreneurs: How do You Empower Your Employees?

Kevin O’Driscoll lists the following ideas for VentureStreet:

• Share your vision and mission with your employees
• Maintain an employee handbook (aka Policies and Procedures Manual)
• Improve your communication skills
• Learn motivational factors
• Acknowledge people’s intelligence
• Catch people doing things right
• Be honest with everyone
• Establish conflict resolution procedures
• Educate on responsibilities and accountability

Thursday we will highlight how to implement change in your business