Empowering Staff, Empowering Yourself

Managers will find themselves, from time to time, in situations where they are ill-prepared, out of the loop, less informed or less articulate than their subordinates, or where subordinates appear to have deeper insights into the issues at hand.  In this Electronic Age, as information travels at breakneck speed to everyone’s desktop, the manager is less able to link her authority to knowledge that only she possesses.

If the manager’s self image is linked to the old paradigm wherein his authority was interdependent with knowledge that he possessed exclusive of his subordinates, then he will be tempted to exclude knowledge from his subordinates, or avoid opportunities for them to share knowledge they have acquired independently.  Worst of all, he may adopt their knowledge without attribution.  We all know managers who have taken a wonderful idea from a subordinate and portrayed it as their own in meetings with the boss. 

None of these ploys will work. Today’ successful managers must be confident decision makers, to be sure.  But most of their interaction with subordinates will be involved in coordinating their staff’s creativity and their contributions to meeting organizational objectives and mission.  In today’s interconnected world it is more likely than ever that a non-manager will produce the most brilliant piece of a strategic plan, or will have the most insightful suggestion about how to deal with an important account.

If managers find their behavior consistent with the older paradigm, what can they do to become successful in the Electronic Age, where managers are more aptly compared to symphony conductors than to generals?  Training can help, especially in a setting where other managers are addressing the same issues.  Increasingly, coaching is available to assist managers to discern and adapt their styles in real time and real issue settings.

More that anything else, managers must learn to live with vulnerability, especially the vulnerability that comes with being not the best informed, not the most knowledgeable and not the wisest.  Here is a very simple first step that a manager can take to become more comfortable with such vulnerability.

Bring a real, but not momentous issue to your subordinates in a staff meeting.  Tell your staff that you are struggling to get your arms around this issue, and that you just don’t seem to be able to resolve it.  Lay it out in some detail, even sharing options that you see but can’t seem to choose among.  Wonder aloud whether anyone has any suggestions.  As staff offer suggestions, listen carefully, ask questions to clarify, take the suggestions seriously and find a way to praise each one.  Do not rush to resolve the issue during that meeting.  Rather spend time showing appreciation for the thoughtful suggestions that have surfaced.

If you find, as you should, that your staff  feel appreciated and empowered by this behavior, you will be emboldened to bring more and more important issues before them.  As you do, they will endow you with even more power.  This is the paradox of sharing one’s vulnerability.  The manager who hides vulnerabilities becomes less powerful in the eyes of his/her subordinates.  S/he who invites subordinates to participate in matters of substance becomes more powerful in their eyes.

Powerful Leaders

When training non-supervisory employees I look for occasions to ask them about their experiences with manager-supervisors.  Usually I do this as we are focusing on communications within organizations.  Typically I will ask them about their experiences with managers and how they perceive the behavior of managers as supervisors.  The purpose of this questioning is to foster discussions about effective management styles among employees who represent the next wave of manager-supervisors. 

Many times I have asked trainees if they have ever known a manager who took good ideas from staff and represented them as his/her own before senior managers.  Most have known such managers.  Trainees typically report that the effect of this behavior is to jeopardize trust, stifle open communication and reduce morale among those whom such managers supervise.

Since many organizations do not invest in effective supervisory training programs for new managers, or in development programs that challenge and assist managers to get the most out of their employees, many managers are left to their own devices.  They may copy the behavior of other managers without having a reliable mechanism of evaluating that behavior.  All around them, in a culture dominated by individualism, in a media awash in messages of instant gratification and in popular success myths that feature competition, domination and takeovers, messages of control, micromanagement and mistrust abound.

It would seem that there are few manager-supervisors who understand the paradox of power.  Unlike water or air, power is not a limited resource.  One need not reduce the power of another in order to become more powerful.  On the contrary, the more power one confers on others, the more powerful one becomes.

When employees are credited for their good ideas and suggestions, they are empowered to be even more creative.  When a manager-supervisor struggles with an issue and asks his subordinates for help, they become empowered.  When a manager-supervisor empowers her employees, morale soars and the employees perceive the manager as even more powerful.  After all, she is now presiding over a group of people who have become more powerful than before.

Manager-supervisors would do well to recognize signs of empowerment: laughter in the workplace, eagerness to communicate, high productivity and work beyond hours.  Conversely, they should recognize the signs of lack of empowerment: a subdued workplace, low morale, dull staff meetings, and an empty office at 5:01pm.  In the first instance, powerful, confident employees abound and the manager’s growing power is barely noticeable; in the second instance, the manager’s power may be absolute, but it is also meager as employees do only what they are told to do.

While some manager-supervisors are naturals at empowering their staff, many have to examine and possibly alter their sense of the way the world works in order to empower their staff.  Organizations would do well to invest in the kind of training and coaching that helps managers to increase the overall power of the organization.

Peter Loan, Brown and Loan Associates