6 Ways To Empower Others To Succeed

Have you ever been to a restaurant and had your food come to the table either cold or the wrong meal delivered and then had the waitress or waiter bend over backwards to correct the situation (even if it wasn’t their fault)?  Many companies are spending more time training managers on how to “empower” their employees.  But what does empowerment really mean?
According to Kinicki & Kreitner, empowerment is about “sharing degrees of power with lower-level employees to better serve the customer” (2008, p. 333).  To me, empowerment is about giving employees the permission to give customers priority and to use their creative talents to find solutions when issues arise, without having to run to management and ask for permission to do something.  Southwest Airlines is a good example of a company that highly empowers their employees and gives them great latitude to keep customers happy.

Empowering employees isn’t easy though, because it requires that a company and their management be committed to continuous employee development.  It means fostering an environment of trust and helping employees learn from successes and analyze failures.

• Share information:  Sharing information with employees is important because it not only helps to build trust; it gives employees important information that will allow them to make the best possible decisions in critical situations.
• Create clear goals and objectives:  Be clear with your vision, goals/objectives, and roles.  This will help create the framework necessary to guide employees to make empowered decisions to keep customers happy.
• Teach that it’s o.k. to make mistakes:  If you empower employees to make decisions that will help keep customers happy, then you have to be willing to allow them to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.  Berating an employee who tried something new will only serve to keep others from trying new things.
• Create an environment that celebrates both successes and failures:  Don’t just celebrate the successes, celebrate the employees who took a risk but maybe didn’t obtain the results intended but learned valuable lessons themselves and for the company.
• Support a learning environment:  This is an ongoing process whereby teams look at various situations and discuss them together to determine how they might handle things differently in the future to achieve a different result.  This is really what our lives are all about…learning new things as we age, by analyzing the things we’ve done in the past.
• Let teams become the hierarchy:  This occurs by slowly and carefully transferring responsibilities from managers to teams.  This can be a very scary and difficult process that takes time, training and a lot of persistence (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008, p. 335).  It’s been my personal experience that this requires a lot of support time to the teams as they move from depending on a manager to make decisions to being autonomous.

Working to create an environment that empowers employees has been shown to not only increase customer satisfaction levels, but also improve employee morale.  It takes training, practice, and the ability to accept mistakes as a part of the learning process – but it is well worth the effort in the long run!
How do you or your company work to empower employees?  Share your successful ideas in the “Comments” section below.
~ Lisa Quast
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Source:
Kinicki, A. & Kreitner, R. (2008). Organizational Behavior: key concepts, skills & best practices.  Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Fear can be complicated and range from worry to phobia and all points in between.  We all have times in our lives when we are gripped by fear.  It’s natural and thanks to fear and “fight or flight” the reason we’re still surviving on the plant.  But there are times when fear creeps into our everyday life like a goblin, trapping us in negative thinking and self-talk, and paralyzing us from taking the steps towards a better life.
That’s when it’s time to regain your personal power and the 5 tips below can show you how!
1. Fear is a talented trickster.  Our fears trick us into believing they are based on fact, when in actuality most of our fear lives in the future.  Usually fear is about something that “might” happen, not something that we definitely-know-for-sure will.  Maintain a focus on the present and when fear sets in ask yourself, “Is there anything for me to be afraid of at this very moment in time?”  The answer will surprise and relieve you!
2. Fear is just an emotion and just like any emotion, it can control us if we give it the power.  Irrational fear is an overblown imagination of what might happen in the future.  When you are afraid that your plane will crash, it is just an emotion not the crash itself that frightens you.  Recognizing this will render your fear powerless.
3. Fear is always about loss; loss of life, loss of wealth, loss of security, loss of comfort, etc.  The fear of loss is directly proportionate to the intensity of the attachment you have.  Dissect your fear or worry down to what you fear will be lost and ask yourself, “If this fear came true, what is the worst thing that can happen?”  Often you will find that your worst case scenario is a long shot and your fear can be easily overcome with the right plan of action and safeguards.
4. Fear is present only when there is a desire.  Fear arises only when there is conflict between what we want and what “might” happen.  We build up expectations around life and come up with a concrete picture of how our lives “should” turn out.  This inflexibility forms a strong foundation for fear.  If we are open to new possibilities and a new vision of safety, comfort and success, we can be courageous.  When we flow with life, fears dissolve.  When you find yourself wracked with fear, ask yourself, “Why should I resist this?”  You may find the strength to let go and flow.
5. Beliefs about fear can be transformed.  The scariest thing about fear is the effect it has on our lives.  For many, it is fear that stands between us, and the best that life has to offer.  It is possible however, to change how we look at fear.  Instead of a barrier standing in our way, what if we chose to look at fear differently and really challenge our deepest beliefs about fear?  Instead of thinking of fear as bad, consider the benefits we experience because of it.  For example, fears like reaching into a burning fire, walking across thin ice, or driving under the influence are valid; these warnings should be heeded.  However, most of our fears are based on worst-case scenarios that we fabricate in our head.  Choose to adopt new and empowering beliefs about fear and you will find it easier to overcome them.
The Soul Sisters
- See more at: http://livingempowered.areavoices.com/2012/10/the-effects-of-fear-can-be-scary/#sthash.q6636W8V.dpuf