I recently read about Mike Shipulski’s post with a similar title (The Three T’s of Empowerment) made me think about empowerment in general. You can read his post here.
In the post, the three T’s that he talks about is Time, Training and Tools. Time for our people to learn the tools and provide the necessary training so that they can really feel empowered and deliver on our expectations. Mike shares what happens when we miss any of these three in his post really well. I really recommend that you read his post.
In my opinion, apart from these three T’s (Time, Tools & Training), there is one more thing that is absolutely required if we want out employees to feel empowered – Trust.
They need to trust us that we will have their back. They need to trust that we will not throw them under the bus at their first mistake or mis-step. When our people are learning something new, they need some leeway to be able to make some mistakes or mis-steps.
It is these mistakes and the learning that comes out of them that results in them internalise the learning and become confident that they can handle this by themselves.
We need to also create the trust with them that if and when needed, they can lean on us for support, guidance and advice (in that order). If the team doesn’t trust us, they will never truly feel empowered to take initiative, risk or decisions and will always end up delegating up to us.
So, in conclusion, I would think that instead of three T’s, we need to get our four T’s (Trust, Time, Training and Tools) right in order for our people to feel empowered to act on their own.
PS: I have written a lot about trust in the past on this blog but I think you will specially like this one – Trusting Adults to Behave like Adults
