To be an effective leader oftentimes means empowering employees to make changes and decisions to help customers even if those decisions don’t align with yours.

The 80/20 of business success stems directly from leadership. The best leaders can make even the worst-performing teams excel and, unfortunately, the weakest leaders can drag down even the best of teams. A few questions to ponder include:

  1. Does your culture encourage empowerment? Regardless of what you say, do people believe they will be rewarded for empowering employees?
  2. Do your managers jump to answer questions or give their employees a chance to shine?
  3. Do you communicate empowerment but would get upset if your employee made an empowered decision that created a month-end shipping crisis?
  4. Do your employees understand the guidelines within which they can make an empowered decision?
  5. Are you willing to live with and vocally support an empowered decision that doesn’t align with how you would have handled the situation?

© Lisa Anderson