How To Empower Your Team: It’s All About Leaning In, Not Stepping Away

Take an interest in your employees who seem less motivated. If they feel valued, they’ll perform better.

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Many organizations have been trying to shift from a model of authoritarian leadership to a model of worker empowerment. As firms are finding out, that transition is not an easy one to make. It requires new behaviors and new ways of thinking for both executives and employees.

The expansion of remote work during the pandemic only exacerbates the problem. Managers are tasked with ensuring flawless execution but are now physically less connected to their teams — and in-person, face-to-face time matters tremendously in relationships.

What is Empowerment?

Oftentimes, empowerment is misunderstood. It can be interpreted to mean that managers and leaders take a hands-off approach, effectively telling employees to sink or swim. That’s more like neglect. Empowerment is an active process. It involves coaching or teaching team members to self-serve, to become adaptive, to make decisions, and to use less of their managers’ time on things that really don’t require their managers’ attention.

Without training or guidance on how to empower, however, managers often simply stop providing direction and let employees figure out…