Recognizing that there are practices to empowering both ourselves and others is sometimes surprising.  You mean there’s a strategy to it?  Most managers say they want to empower others, but do we in practice?  Do you give power?  

It's important. In fact, Timothy R. Clark just published research that supports the critical nature of empowerment to fostering creativity and innovation in organizations in his 4 Stages of Psychological Safety.

If you want to empower others, start with you.  Empowering ourselves is about controlling our own lives.  Claiming our rights.  It's important to consider our beliefs about our power.  (See Podcast Episode 11:  Assertiveness.)  How you feel about rights, yours and others affects how much you use empowerment as a strategy and practice. If you want to do more of it, focus on the environment you create.  

5 practices to do create an empowering environment:

1. Share Liberally:  The more context (information, perspective) those around you have, the more effective they will be.  It's easier to trust someone who has relevant, up to date and complete information.  Clear communication is vital.  Make a practice of establishing the platform and processes to share information with your team.
2. Listen Constantly/Openly:  Listening is an active, deliberate action.  When empowering others, your role is to listen to what they say and don’t say.  Get good at reading body language.  By being an excellent listener—we create the opportunity to hear and truly consider new ideas, barriers, as well as the hopes and dreams of those around us.  Often this communication is nuanced, it could be indirect.  
3. Promote Active, Continuous Learning and Growth:  Giving others power to make decisions, take action, and get good results rests on confidence and competence.  As expectations continue to ramp up organizationally, we need continuous growth to meet new and challenging demands.  Make active learning a part of your priorities, focus and expectations.  Not an option.
4. “Celebrate” Mistakes: Allow learning to occur when a mistake happens.  And when someone makes a mistake, TELL THEM!  Share your mistakes as well.  This goes a long way to building trust.
5. Praise Effort:  Meaning, reinforce the behaviors you see that are “growth” oriented (we explored this in Podcast Episode 4).  This practice is particularly important with those who are not as confident or experienced as others.  Praise efforts versus outcomes.

Empowerment is a strategy and a practice.  It gives you the time to focus on more strategic value added responsibilities.  It gives those you work with the opportunity for growth and development, for autonomy-which is a significant motivator and contributor to engagement.  It builds trust.  Empowerment doesn’t mean we achieve successful results 100% of the time.  It means we achieve more knowledge, insight and power—in the experience.  Are you strong enough to empower?

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