Empower Your Employees More Effectively!

Do you ever empower someone, only to later realize you put them in the wrong position or role?

The art of employee empowerment is something that must be done very specifically and strategically. If we use a "shot-gun" approach when giving employees new tasks and putting employees into new roles, we are setting them, ourselves and the team up to fail. While occasionally the situation will call for it, most of the time we can't blindly empower others just because the new task matches what other people with the same job title are good at or simply just because we "have a feeling" they will like it or do well - more thought and decision making must go into the process.

The first step in the process actually has nothing to do with the employee - we FIRST need to fully understand the role we are putting them in, and pick it apart as much as we can - an activity called RTR (role/task/responsibility) Evaluation. We should look at the RTR we are considering them for, and ask ourselves questions such as: What specific skills are needed, what level of experience must they already have prior to moving forward, what strengths are helpful for them to have, what resources might they need, and who has successfully done this in the past?

When we are able to gather all of the answers to the above questions, we can then take the next step which is to evaluate our team and decide who the best person for the job might be. When we are effectively (and consistently) evaluating all of the competencies, roles, tasks, and responsibilities that our employees might be empowered with, it will give us a much better chance of putting the right person into the right position - resulting in their (and our) success!


**This week's tip was taken from "Empowering Others for Success" which is the July session of The Compass Program. Click Here to view the schedule of all 12 sessions for The Compass Program.

A Great Way to Improve Workplace Communication!

First, ask yourself...
Do you ever get the feeling that you don't really understand the meaning behind someone's message?

True, effective communication only takes place when the message that the "listener" interprets is a true reflection of exactly what the "speaker" not only said, but meant as well. If the listener does not fully understand the meaning, feeling and thoughts behind the speaker's words, then true communication did not really take place. Words might have been exchanged, but the real message was not understood by the listener.

A common problem many people have is that in an attempt to interpret what someone tells us, we filter it through our OWN paradigm. We reference OUR past experiences, OUR feelings, and OUR perceptions, but the person sending the message usually doesn't share any of these same things with us. It is this typical reaction on the part of the listener that most often causes miscommunication.

The next time you find yourself doing it, make it a point to ask clarifying questions and draw out as much information from the other person as you can. Do everything you can do in order to get to know how THEY feel, and what THEY really mean. Doing this will help you see things from their paradigm, thus allowing message sent to truly equal message received!


**This week's tip was taken from "Promoting Open & Healthy Dialogue" which is the October session of The Compass Program. Click Here to view the schedule of all 12 sessions for The Compass Program.