5 Secret Ways to Empower Your Team - A Quick Guide

Do you think micromanagement has reduced your employees’ productivity and hurt business revenue? While micromanagement might seem productive, it is not. Then, how can you enhance team productivity and bring back your business on track? It is where team empowerment comes into play. 

Does team empowerment mean giving complete authority to employees and taking a hands-off approach? Certainly Not! Mostly team empowerment is often misunderstood. Team empowerment is defined as empowering employees to make decisions for the organization. By empowering employees, organizations can free up managers for priority tasks, increase employee effort, and boost engagement throughout the workforce.

Recent studies reveal that organizations with highly empowered teams outperformed competitors by nearly 50%. How can you empower your team to enhance overall team productivity? Here are five different ways to do that.

Ways to Increase Empowerment in Your Team

#1: Start working towards a common goal

To improve team empowerment, make the decision-making process collaborative. Initially, set a solid business goal or objective. Then, consider opinions from employees on how to navigate the challenges on the way to getting there.

To know your employees’ thoughts, you can conduct a brainstorming session among your team members. Unquestionably, you will have a clear vision of your company’s objectives, but your employees may know more creative ways to complete a task.

Additionally, be open to new thoughts and opportunities, since that is how you can enhance team empowerment. Within the team, encourage each employee’s opinions and ideas. Besides, trust with your employees so that they feel empowered and are free to discuss new ideas.

#2: Focus on a strength-based culture at the workplace 

Every individual will have their strengths and weaknesses. Instead of pointing out only the flaws, encourage employees to work more on their strengths. When employees leverage their strengths at work, higher business outcomes are promised. Besides, this helps in intensifying employees’ confidence.

When you’re assigning responsibilities within projects, do so based on employee strengths. Wondering how to identify your employees’ positive points? The simple answer is to meet with each employee and ask them what they consider their strengths. Always, enough understanding of your team encourages you to manage them more effectively. In addition to this, you can give them more opportunities to succeed by empowering them to tackle tasks and projects suited to their strengths. Consider investing in training and development to help your employees improve the understanding of theories where they’re lacking. 

#3: Strengthen positive behavior

When you empower your team, mistakes are inevitably bound to happen. But does it means firing them and recruiting others? No, that is not the right strategy to run a business. At times when your employees make mistakes, give them constructive feedback, and train them if required. It will certainly help them avoid making the same mistake in the future.

Additionally, it would help if you recognized your employees’ hard work. Verbal acknowledgment, written email, and public recognition in front of the team are significant ways to praise employees for their contribution. 

#4: Encourage open communication within the team

Micromanagement within the team often creates a culture of mistrust. Leaders must avoid specifying every small detail of the project and give employees opportunities to execute tasks their way. 

Let your team members understand the trust that you have on them. Besides, when employees come with queries, consider their ideas instead of giving your way of doing things. Also, let your employees know their feedback regularly. To do so, set up regular meetings and track the progress.

#5: Try to be an encouraging mentor

Two out of five entrepreneurs say that high employee empowerment correlates with a positive work environment. Always be like an encouraging mentor for your team. Try to create a culture where your employees feel valued and respected. Also, consider their strengths while assigning tasks and conduct training whenever necessary.

In a team, there are high possibilities that disputes might arise. In case of conflicts, try to quickly address the issues by considering opinions from both team members. Besides, it would be best if you always had a positive attitude at work, encouraging employees to see everything positively.

At times when your employees would like to learn new skills, encourage them. Various companies support employees in their continued education. It’s not always essential to do this, but you can try to be flexible with your employees’ schedules up to a certain extent.

Summary

Along with following these tips to empower your employees, you can invest in various automation tools to support them in enhancing operational efficiency and improving productivity. Also, give your employees the right tools to communicate and collaborate.