Your team’s success is your success, so if you fail to empower them, your business may suffer. Unfortunately, not all business owners know how to set their teams up to thrive and achieve great things. This can result in all manner of problems like high turnover rates, low staff morale, and plummeting productivity.
Thankfully, this is a skill you can learn. If you want to place your company in a strong position to succeed, try empowering your team in the following ways:
Develop Their Skills
Most employees don’t want to stagnate in the same role for years on end. Instead, they want to learn, grow, and find higher footing in your company. Help them achieve these goals by developing their skills, promoting the employees showing promise, and giving them more responsibility. Before long, some employees will prove themselves to be management material, with you trusting them to order corporate promotional products, take care of vendor negotiations, and handle other tasks that would typically keep you chained to a desk.
Appreciate Them
Many business owners believe they only have to show their employees appreciation by providing them with a regular paycheck. However, that’s rarely enough for teams to feel appreciated. Instead, get into the habit of regularly thanking them for specific things they’ve done. Even something as simple as remarking on how an employee handled a customer complaint can make them feel valued. They should then feel empowered to continue working hard for your company.
Show Empathy
Many business owners struggle to be empathetic toward their employees. However, given how crucial empathy can be for team success, it’s important that you learn.
Start by understanding what empathy is before slowly incorporating empathetic practices into your everyday work. Empathy describes your ability to understand someone else’s situation or perspective. Being a more empathetic leader involves approaching problems from the viewpoint of your employees, asking questions to understand a situation better, and validating how your employees are feeling.
Check in Often
Employees don’t always feel comfortable approaching their business leaders with problems or complaints. This can be especially true if doing so in the past didn’t result in any action. Empower your team to be engaged in their work by prioritizing one-on-one check-ins.
Ask them if they have any questions or concerns, and find out if there’s anything you could be doing better. If you address problems as they arise, your team will feel heard and more satisfied in their work.
Communicate Appropriately
Poor communication can be responsible for mass exodus within businesses. Even if things seem fine right now, if you’re making daily communication mistakes, this will lead to staff dissatisfaction sooner or later.
In general, business leaders tend to face communication problems when they communicate insufficiently or inconsistently. They may also struggle if they don’t explain the context or are too vague. Some leaders also fail to listen while they communicate.
While challenging to get right, effective communication can give you an abundance of benefits. One of the most powerful of these benefits is that your team will feel more empowered to give your business 100% of their effort.
If you’re ready to improve your communication skills, start by being authentic, listening more than you speak, and communicating across multiple platforms. Asking good questions and encouraging input might also help you refine your skills.
Empowering your team for success is not a single-step process. In fact, it takes multiple steps and a great deal of effort. However, the effort will seem worth it when you’re enjoying a thriving, productive, and loyal team that sets your business up for long-term success.
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