Benefits of Empowerment
Teams are certainly very relevant and important elements in today’s high-performance organization but the important thing to remember as a leader is that we can’t simply rely on putting highly effective individuals together to make a highly effective team. Empowerment increases the effectiveness of the team and drives many intangible benefits both for the organization and the employees.
Effective teams often require the right mix of people, skills, resources, and a focus on building good working relationships. Empowering your team members allows leaders to utilize the skills, knowledge, experience and motivation of their entire talent base. Let’s understand how to empower your team members to achieve great wins!
What is Empowerment?
Empowerment is the authority or power given to someone to do something. Empowerment refers to the delegation of some authority and responsibility to employees and involving them in the decision-making process, not in mere job activities, but rather at all the levels of management. Empowered employees develop loyalty and trust and they are proud to be working for the company and are eager to contribute to company success. People can be “empowered” to make decisions at work. They can be “empowered” to speak up with new ideas. Employees can also be “empowered” to act when the integrity of the organization is at stake.
Benefits to the Employee
Empowerment provides new opportunities to your team members to develop and stretch beyond their current capabilities and acquire new skills. It helps in increasing their motivation level, creates new opportunities to develop their leadership skills and satisfy their self-actualization needs. Empowered employees have increased self-confidence, are keen to develop their own skills, and also to find ways to make use of those skills to the company's benefit.
It brings a sense of ownership to the employee due to which he personalizes the goals and objectives of the organization and associates his success with his own abilities. Also, the performance of the employee improves as he attaches self-induced rewards with his performance by making decisions pertaining to the problem and sees the results (success) that follow.
Benefits to the Organization
On the other hand, it brings immense benefits to the organization and to the project or the program. Performance increases, people feel more satisfied and there is low attrition. You can achieve great results and exposure builds the leadership pipeline for your organization. Empowerment is all about mutual success where everyone wins.
Empowerment increases the organization’s responsiveness towards the problems or issues. Also, there is an increase in the productivity of an employee as he is completely engaged with the firm and takes decisions for the betterment of the organization as a whole. The benefits are numerous and well-documented — happier, more productive employees, a higher level of engagement, enhanced customer service, reduced stress, increased innovation, more pride and loyalty, less stagnancy, and an organization that is more adaptable to change. Plus, it just makes the workplace more pleasant for everyone.
Empowering your team is not difficult, but it does require a conscious effort. A tremendous shift in thinking is required by both leaders and professionals to make empowerment work.
Related Links
You May Also Like
-
Stress is an essential part of our life. No one can live without stress. Stress can be beneficial as well as harmful. Stress as a positive influence adds excitement and hope while as a negative influence it can result in destructive feelings, anger, and depression. Although the general orientation to stress is to consider unfavorable outcomes, yet one must have observed that stress experiences may also facilitate the development of effective and varied coping behavior, increased personal resources, and lead to a sense of competence in development. Stress at a moderate level is not only inevitable but may be useful for physical and mental well-being.
-
Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. The best time management techniques improve the ways you work. Time management refers to managing time effectively so that the right time is allocated to the right activity. Learn more about the five steps for effective time management viz. study, identify, analyze, decide, and implement.
-
Benefits of Teams in Workplace
The use of formal work teams is commonplace in modern organizations. But why we have teams? What are the benefits or advantages that teams provide for organizations and employees? Do we really need to adopt formal team structures and use team-building approaches in organizations? Read this article to explore and learn the benefits of having formal teams in organizations.
-
A manager or an employee in an organization who is experiencing a high level of stress may develop high blood pressure, ulcers, irritability, difficulty in making routine decisions, loss of appetite, accident proneness, and the like. These can be subsumed under three general categories, physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms. Stress can give rise to a number of changes.
-
Change & Culture of Innovation
Predicting the future is a tricky business but managers need to have a future perspective in order to take business advantage and remain competitive. They need to drive and introduce constructive change to the business of the enterprise. The first step to creativity and innovation is to drive a culture of Innovation. Managers need to focus on developing future mindset all the time to keep pace with the unfolding future.
-
Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men. Charismatic Leader gathers followers, through dint of personality and charm. Understand the meaning and concept of Charismatic Leadership and the qualities of a charismatic leader. Gain an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of using charismatic leadership. Finally, explore the difference between charismatic and transformational leadership.
-
Many different types of teams have been identified by social scientists. Managers may encounter the diverse types of challenges while managing different kinds of teams. Challenges associated with Cross-Functional Teams might be different from that of a Geographically Dispersed Team or a Virtual Team. This article explores some common categories and subtypes of teams.
-
Recognizing Stress & its Sources
As an individual, you almost certainly know what stress feels like. Stressors are events or situations to which people must adjust. Stressors may be physical or psychological in nature. The level of severity of stress is determined not merely by exposure but the intensity, duration, and frequency of stressors. The sources of stress are many. They arise from multiple areas both with the individual and from the environment.
-
Teams are certainly very relevant and important elements in today’s high-performance organization but the important thing to remember as a leader is that we can’t simply rely on putting highly effective individuals together to make a highly effective team. Empowerment increases the effectiveness of the team and drives many intangible benefits both for the organization and the employees.
-
This style is characterized by leaders making decisions for others and expecting followers to follow instructions. The directive leader is adept at giving instructions, setting expectations, and establishing timelines and performance standards. However, it is possible for the same leaders to display both directive and supportive behavior as per the demands of the situation.
