By clearly communicating the vision of the organization and how a team and its individuals contribute to that vision, you are empowering your employees with the knowledge that their contribution is making a difference.
Showing appreciation for work well done makes it more likely that a person will do it again and do it even better. It will also encourage them to continue to be innovative, take action, and to solve problems. About the Author Pat Bosworth Founder and CEO Patrick effectively coaches leaders at all levels and across a number of industries with a pragmatic, consultative approach.
Previously, he was vice president with Right Management and held other senior OD and development positions in manufacturing and the professional services Industries. He holds an M. Stay current on your favorite topics. While studies show most HR professionals and executives are dissatisfied with their current performance management system, the solution may not be as simple as eliminating performance reviews.
Recent research has demonstrated that employees have their own expectations of how much leaders should try to empower them. We compared the effects of empowering leadership on employee task performance in Western and Eastern cultures. To our surprise, we found that leaders who were perceived as empowering by employees in companies located in Eastern cultures such as China had a bigger effect on routine performance than leaders in Western cultures like the U.
In other words, empowering leadership behaviors e. This result may be explained by the fact that, in Eastern societies, like China, India, and the Republic of Korea, those in more powerful positions are expected to assist and support those in lower positions, while subordinates are expected to be loyal and obey their leader.
This social norm should enhance the acceptance of leadership empowerment among employees and even amplify its effects. But in Western societies, like the U. In this context, the extensive care and concern shown by an empowering leader could be seen as an intrusion or even an attempt at informal control. This may explain why we found weaker effects in Western cultures, where empowering leadership is seemingly not always welcomed.
We also looked at whether empowering leadership would be more effective in labor-intensive businesses such as hospitality, construction, education, medical care , where people are key to organizational effectiveness, compared to asset-intensive businesses for example, energy, telecommunications, and transportation , which require substantial investment in physical or financial assets.
To our surprise, we did not find that to be the case. We assumed that empowering leadership might be more constrained in asset-intensive businesses due to automation and highly structured work processes, but our finding suggests that empowering leadership is beneficial across different industries. Finally, we explored which employees might benefit most from a leader who seeks to empower them. We found that empowering leadership had a stronger positive influence on the day-to-day performance of employees who had less experience in the organization compared to employees who had been in their jobs for longer.
In other words, empowering leaders saw greater improvements in job performance among less experienced employees than among more experienced employees. This also surprised us as we thought employees with less experience and job knowledge would be less able to seize opportunities given to them by managers. However, it is also likely that newer members of staff are especially keen to take opportunities and make a good first impression. Thus, affording newer staff the opportunity to take ownership of their role may be a particularly effective leadership tool.
Although our meta-analysis revealed new insights about empowering leaders, in some areas relatively few studies were available for analysis. For example, longitudinal studies were very rare and thus we could not determine causality — our correlations do not confirm whether empowering leadership caused increases in employee performance or whether employees who performed better were more likely to be given additional responsibility and empowered by their leaders.
Overall, though, our results suggest that empowering leadership can motivate employees and fuel their creativity, but it can also create additional burdens and stress that may hurt their routine performance. It is crucial for managers to understand that empowering leadership has its limits and that factors like trust and experience affect how their behaviors are perceived.
Employees want to know their opinion is valued and they are taken seriously when they speak up about their ideas on how to improve processes, operations or overall department decisions. Employees are 30 per cent more likely to believe they influence important decisions when they are listened to and asked their opinion.
Allow employees to work on special projects Everyone feels a sense of fulfilment and empowerment when they learn something new and work with new people. As they are exposed to new people, leaders and skills they will be able to see more clearly how the work they do impacts the company. In fact, when we looked at 10, examples of award-winning work, we found that nine out of 10 instances involved someone seeing for themselves how their work directly impacted others and the broader organisation.
Provide networking opportunities When people feel a sense of belonging it can improve their overall wellbeing. When employees feel good about what they are doing at work day-after-day they produce better work and feel more empowered in their role. By allowing your employees to network cross-departmentally they are able to grow and diversify their social ties.
The important part about this one is to make sure mentorship opportunities are available to everyone, not just top performers. When leaders turn into mentors, employees are 72 per cent more likely to believe their organisation allows all employees to grow.
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