Empowering Your Team
To Drink From The Fountain
of Unending Drive

Building empowered teams starts before the hire. Choose people who show initiative and grow through adversity. Watch from a distance to understand how they interact. Encourage the ones who step up. Hold everyone accountable, including yourself. Create space for constructive debate. And celebrate hard. Do all five together, not just the comfortable ones.

Your company needs to develop strong, empowered employees if you want to grow in today's marketplace. Here's how to do that:

How Do You Find People Who Can Actually Be Empowered?

Initiative isn't a natural instinct for most people with an employee mindset. You can't teach it after the hire - you screen for it before. Look for candidates who proactively seek feedback, strive toward team goals without being pushed, and have grown through adversity rather than being defined by it. Build your hiring process around finding those people, and the culture follows naturally from there.

Having empowered employees is the dream of every leader. Every upper level manager wants their teams to show initiative, but initiative is not a natural instinct for the "employee mindset", and as such it needs to be conditioned into the right people.

Therefore, having a team of empowered employees begins with hiring people who can be empowered. Prospective job candidates should always be screened on whether they proactively seek needed information and feedback, and whether they strive to accomplish team goals.

Leaders understand that there are people who go through adversity, learn from that adversity and grow as an individual. Then there are those who allow adversity to define them. The worst place to be as a leader is at the mercy of a team that requires constant motivation. The only solution is commit to hire the right people, so true leaders make hiring the right people a life study.

What Does It Mean to Watch From a Distance?

Don't babysit your team. Instead, watch from a distance and study how they interact with each other, with customers, and in their own work. Use what you learn to modify their environment so they naturally interact in ways that drive personal and company growth. The goal is not to set up challenges for them to overcome, but to make it easier for them to walk the path you want by making it easy for them to make good decisions on their own.

Fight the desire to babysit your team. Rather, watch from a distance, and take note on how they interact with each other and with customers, and by themselves - then use what you learn to modify their environment so they interact in ways that are better for personal and company growth. The goal here is not to set up challenges for your team to overcome hoping they become better, but instead to make it easier for them to walk the path you want them to walk (ie: the path that makes it easy for them to make their own decisions... decisions that foster growth within the company)

How Do You Reward the Right Behavior?

Acknowledge that some employees will resist opportunities to shine, and that's okay - they can still be assets in the right position. Your job is to encourage and reward the ones who step up. Only when a leader knows when to teach, when to lead, and when to do neither, will they get peak performance from their team.

A seasoned leader understands that there will always be a small percentage of employees who will fight the opportunity to shine, and those employees can still be an asset in the right position. Our job as leaders is to encourage and reward those who choose to step up.

Why Does Accountability Have to Flow Both Ways?

Employees need to know when they're a true asset and when they're not. But they also need to see you held accountable. When leaders allow themselves to be vulnerable and accept accountability from the team, it signals that the standard applies to everyone. A team that sees exceptions for the founder will stop holding themselves to any standard. Celebrate the good. Hold everyone to it equally, starting with yourself.

Employees need to be held accountable, they need to know when they're a true asset to the company, and when they're not. Equally important, if they see others not being held accountable, they will see little need to make the extra effort to reach future goals.

Let them know they're appreciated by celebrating the good things they do, and help them understand that their input is valued even if you decide to go a different way. Make sure you acknowledge them for sharing and reward valuable input that helps the company.

What Does Constructive Conflict Actually Produce?

True empowerment requires setting up an environment where employees are both willing and able to have constructive conflict. They should feel comfortable suggesting new ideas AND debating whether those ideas will work. When managed properly, that debate always results in streamlined, well-thought-out strategies that employees take personal ownership in. When employees own an idea, they drive harder to make it successful.

True empowerment of employees requires that you set up the environment so your employees are both willing and able to have both the constructive conflict necessary to flush out the best ideas...

Constructive conflict occurs when employees are comfortable suggesting new innovative ideas, AND ALSO willing to debate whether those ideas will be successful. The debate about ideas by smart employees, when managed properly, always results in streamlined, well thought out strategies that the employees can take a personal ownership in.

When employees own an idea - they drive harder to make those ideas successful for the company.

How Do Leaders Create Space for People to Grow?

All leaders know employees need growth plans and milestone checkpoints. Smart leaders go further - they set up environments where people can test new ideas and learn from both successes and failures. Leaders who consistently develop empowered teams lead by example, allow themselves to be vulnerable because it builds trust, let the team hold them accountable so everyone owns growth, encourage constructive conflict, and celebrate as hard as they work.

All leaders know that employees need to set plans for growth and milestone checkpoints. But smart leaders set up laboratory environments where their people can test new ideas and learn from the failures as well as the successes.

In short, there are lessons to be learned from leaders who consistently develop empowered teams. They lead by example, they allow themselves to be vulnerable because they know it builds trust, they allow the team to hold them accountable so the team understands that everyone is accountable for growth, they encourage constructive conflict to foster the best ideas, and they celebrate as hard as they work.

Chris is the founder of Club 28. A business coaching program of 28 CEO's and Entrepreneurs who Chris personally works with to grow their revenue, add structured systems to their business, and boost their online presence. With 20 years in the world of business, growing multiple successful companies of his own, Chris Guerriero has learned what it takes to build a successful and prosperous company. In addition to helping hundreds of smaller and medium sized companies to double, triple, or quadruple their bottom line. Chris has been the secret behind many of the top names in personal development, in politics, and in business, helping them to position themselves and their companies as respected leaders in their field.