Company Core Value: Empowering Employees

Successful businesses empower their employees to make decisions and be leaders.  It never works perfectly.  It isn't always smooth, but successful companies succeed at doing this.  

I want to encourage you to do the same for your business.

For years, I would often repeat one of my company's core values.  It went like this:  When it is possible, we want our employees to operate on their own, without heavy-handed supervision and monitoring.  We want our employees to use their judgment to make decisions. 

Notice the last six words "Use their judgment to make decisions".  That's what you want.  The two ends of the spectrum are making decisions vs avoiding decisions. (sometimes people mistakenly think it is right decisions vs wrong decisions.)

Here's a quote from a famous President that says it quite well:

“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

If empowering employees is a goal for you, here are 5 tips to help you get there.

1.  Be deliberate in telling employees they can make decisions, and be deliberate in asking their opinion.  Asking for opinions helps employees build confidence.

2.  Share the Theodore Roosevelt quote and mean it.  

There is a parable in the Bible about a Manager who gives three employees a certain amount of money.  (This is the Parable of the Talents for you Bible scholars).  In the end, two of the employees invested the money and made a good return for the Manager.  The third employee was afraid, so he dug a hole and buried the money, which he returned to the manager in due time. 

And guess what? The Manager condemned the third employee.  He condemned him for not making decisions and for not trying. 

That manager could have been Theodore Roosevelt, but even he isn't as old as the Bible. 

3.  Share your thinking when you are faced with a decision.  Let your employees see how you are deliberating.  

4.  If a decision you made was a mistake, admit it.  I have been wrong plenty of times.  Others will be too.  I also have disagreed with decisions that others have made.  Sometimes it turned out I was right.  Sometimes I was wrong.  The point is that no one has a monopoly on correct decisions.

5.  Offer grace if an employee's decision turns out to be wrong.  This one is vitally important.  People learn from their incorrect decisions.  As a manager, if you offer grace and a non-judgmental discussion about an incorrect decision, people will learn to make better decisions in the future.  If you offer condemnation, they will learn something far more damaging.  They will learn to avoid making decisions in the future.

If you do that, you'll make Theodore Roosevelt mad, and you do not want a mad Theodore Roosevelt.