Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM  

According to James Belasco, founder of San Diego State University’s Management Development Center and author of several books including Flight of the Buffalo, a leader’s job is engage people in two ways: 1) to see the future and envision what the organization must become and 2) to empower people to apply their unique skills and capabilities to create that future.  An empowered organization becomes an employee-led organization and the leader’s role changes from the role of director to that of a developer.  Rather than telling people what to do, the leader will share important information needed for decision making and help people develop the skills they need so that they can be empowered. 

In many workplaces, true empowerment is all too rare.  Yet when you give more freedom to your employees, you enable them to think for themselves -- and to be more creative, more enthusiastic, and more productive.

Here’s this month’s feature ...

The “E” Word ... Again -- by Sharon Jordan-Evans & Beverly Kaye
From -- Fast Company Talent & Careers Online Resource Center , March 2005

Highlights from the article:

Why empower -- really?!  Answer yes or no to each question below.  If you answer yes to four or more on the checklist, you have just identified several important reasons to power down.

• Is your organization lean and mean, like so many others after years of downsizing?

• Is your span of control larger than ever, and are the expectations from above constantly increasing your workload and pressure?

• Do some of your employees seem apathetic or less than eager to show up on Monday mornings?

• Are many of your employees still waiting to be told what to do every step of the way?

• Is the competition nipping at your heels (or already outpacing you)?

• Have you lost any of your talented team members because they were bored or needed a new challenge?

• Do your stars have more options outside your organization than they did in recent months or years?

You may be convinced that you could benefit by giving more power to your employees, yet find it difficult to know where to start.  Here are four tips to try:

• Ask more questions -- give fewer answers.  Some managers unintentionally dis-empower (even undervalue) their employees by answering all of their questions or giving them step-by-step direction.  You cannot continue to be the all-knowing sage if you want your people’s brains to keep functioning!  Ask them questions to get them involved in problem-solving and in developing possible solutions.  Trust your employees to come up with great answers and give their solutions an honest try.  

• Dole out the praise.  Encourage and praise your employees as they struggle to produce outstanding, creative solutions and new approaches.  If you find yourself saying, “Great ideas, but ...”, try cutting your response of at “ideas.”  

• Manage your reactions when you give them power and they fail.  Freedom to do it “their way” can be risky and there will be failures.  Instead of punishing, collaborate with your employees to learn from their mistakes.  Focus on what they could do differently next time around, rather than the rearview mirror approach of what they should have done.  

• Give the spotlight away.  Share the stage and the applause with your team members.  Your stock will go up with your employees as you increasingly give them room to perform (and get credit for) brilliant, creative work.

For the full text article, go to ...
Sorry!  This article is no longer available online.

The Fundamentals of Performance Management

How employees embrace the work they do has a dramatic effect on their company’s financial performance.  Engaged employees stay on the job longer, and they are safer, more productive, and more profitable.  Employee engagement is one of the benefits of an effective performance management system that delivers these key components:

1. Hiring and promoting employees into roles that fit their talents.  Many companies waste time and money trying to develop employees through training.  Training can be a valuable business investment, but only when it’s offered to employees who have the potential to excel in a role or at a task in the first place.  Companies should focus on hiring people with the right talents for their roles.  The first step is to objectively assess the demands of each role.  Then build a model of the talents required for exceptional performance in that role.

2. Creating a supportive work environment.  An employee’s immediate supervisor has the greatest influence on his or her engagement.  People need the trust and security created by a close employee-manager relationship before they’ll invest in performing their jobs at the highest level and deliver outstanding results.

3. Freeing teams to develop their own workflows.  There’s that “E” word again!  Managers need to trust their teams to find the best way to produce excellent results.  No job has a perfect process associated with it; there are no “magic steps” that will produce an excellent product every time.  Mistakes will occur and any process will produce suboptimal results if the team using that process doesn’t own the process.  Teams that determine their own workflows are far more likely to own their work and its outcome -- and they’re far more likely to achieve high performance levels.

The fundamental ideas of performance management are simple: get great people and develop them; create a supportive work environment; focus employees on the right targets, and then free them to create their best ways to achieve them.

Source: Gallup Management Journal -- February 2005

Next Month

Leadership is plural.  Success is not associated with just one, but with many leaders working in concert with each other.  Learn how leaders build winning streaks by bringing out the best in others.

To subscribe: send an e-mail to jeff@giftedleaders.com with the word, SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.  Please feel free to pass this e-newsletter along to your friends and family.