When you think “empowerment,” you might imagine big gestures and new responsibilities. But empowerment can happen every day in the small workday moments.
As a leader, you can leverage these moments to build trust and boost your team’s confidence. The small moments might be putting an employee in charge of an office event. It might be letting them run a meeting. Or it’s accepting a choice they’ve made, even if it’s not what you would have chosen. It’s important to show your employees that you’re willing to let them make decisions. Otherwise, they might feel like they have no agency or value within the company.
For you, it’s good practice in delegating and relinquishing control. If you can do it when there isn’t much on the line, you can do it in the big moments too. It’s critical to be ready to delegate effectively when needed. Because there will be times when success or failure has far-reaching consequences.
So practice empowerment in the small moments. Try to be less hands-on and avoid micromanaging your employees’ decisions. When you empower someone, they often go out of their way to do whatever they can to excel. They do this not out of fear, but because they want to honor the trust you put in them.
