Empowerment Training for the Workplace

1. Use Personal Behavioral Styles (DISC) to self-assess, read others, and adapt to their communication and motivational needs

2. Create an environment of empowerment

3. Coach decision making skills that are profitable and delight the customer

4. Coach team members to think of financial / risk factors in decision making
   

5. Be emotionally intelligent to nurture a growth vs. fixed mindset

6. Create a psychological safety net to enable team members to grow

Empowerment knowledge, skills, and abilities for good leaders:

• Describe the benefits, challenges, and setbacks of employee empowerment.
• Make savvy decisions based on the business acumen skills.
• Articulate the behavior attributes associated with sharing power.
• Be aware of human responses of fight or flight and create a safety net for critical conversations.
• Share creative decision making that identifies new opportunities to delight the customer.
• Make empowerment low-risk for team members that would rather not be empowered.
• Guide team members in decision making based on: risk assessment, unintended consequence, cost and timeliness.
• Seek feedback to ensure actions coincide with team member empowerment expectations.
  

With flatter, leaner organizational structures the need for team leader empowerment training in the workplace at the closest point to the customer is necessary to achieve organic growth while neutralizing competitive thrusts. This workplace empowerment of team members must be articulated and demonstrated at all leadership levels to convince team members that they are empowered. The challenge for managers, supervisors, and leaders is to avoid historical top-down, autocratic "check with me first" management style and embrace a style reflective of good coaches, advisors, mentors, and facilitators. Good leaders are expected to support the workplace empowerment of team members by encouraging, instructing, guiding, and giving them advice. The power that good leaders have (the capacity that managers have to influence the behavior of team members) and work responsibilities, must now be shared with team members through the creation of trust, assurance, motivation, and support.

Good leadership practices of sharing information, rewards, and power with team members to unleash creativity and make decisions that, delight customers, contribute to the company's financial well being, and support the vision and mission of the organization. It is based on the concept of giving team members the skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation, as well holding them accountable for outcomes of their actions.

The Everest Training & Consulting approach is to work with the organizational culture over a period of time and prescribe actions to take to effect empowerment training skills to the workplace. We take into account:

• Commitment by all levels in the organization is mandatory.
• Empowerment and accountability: can't have one without the other.
• Behaviors of leaders, managers, supervisors, and team members that reflect an empowered organization.
• Financial benefits of an empowered workforce.