8 Benefits of Empowering People

Many managers and leaders know that there are huge benefits to be gained from empowering others.  As a manager you can choose to either use your power to empower others or disempower others.  Which do you think would bring greatest benefit in achieving results?

There are numerous benefits of empowering others and these include:

Building loyalty

When you get a reputation as a manager or leader that gives people the opportunity to grow and develop, staff become incredibly loyal.  They know that you trust them and will go that extra mile when things are tough.

Energising others

Have you ever been part of a team or organisation where people are totally energised and upbeat?  If so, you were probably part of an organisation that empowers people and gets out of the way.  When people are energised, they find new ways of breaking down what might have been viewed as obstacles in the past.

Motivation

When a manager or leader tells you the result that they want and leaves it to you to find out the best way to achieve, chances are your motivation increases.  When you empower someone you are essentially saying to them that you know they can do it and trust them to deliver.

Learning and development

We learn when we do things right.  Yet in truth we learn more when things don’t quite work out as expected.  Ask successful people when they learned most and they are likely to tell you about times when events did not unfold as they expected.   When things don’t work out we take the time to reflect and consider what we would do differently next time. 

When you empower, you take some risk and allow others to learn and develop from doing a task or project.

Performance

You might have heard the saying practice makes perfect.  Another way of looking at it is to say that empowering improves performance.  Changes in performance happen more quickly when people get into action and start doing. Empowering is a great way of improving performance.

Achieving results

All managers and leaders are at the end of the day judged on the results they achieve.  Empowering others and leveraging the full range of skills, knowledge, experience and personal attributes at your disposal helps achieve results.

Recruitment and retention

Attracting and retaining good people is a major challenge for many organisations.  If you are known as a manager or leader who empowers others, you will start to attract the best and they will stay longer.   I bet that you can think of a number of managers that you worked who you stayed with longer than you expected simply because they kept your development needs in focus.

Succession planning

Managers and leaders are ambitious and like to keep climbing the career ladder.  Many managers and leaders want to ensure that when the time comes for them to move on, there is a batch of people ready to step into their role.  Empowering others is a way to ensure this is the case.

Empowering others has huge benefits, so what will you start to do differently when it comes to empowerment?