Every business owner or
leader wants their team to be empowered: working enthusiastically and
effectively and making decisions as if it were their own business.
But few organisations
genuinely achieve this.
In fact, recent research
shows that:
- Less than 30% of employees knew how their
role contributed to the success of the business, and
- Less than 40% were motivated to go beyond
what they were ‘directly paid’ to do.
These are shocking
statistics, yet, as customers, I think we can be sure that they’re fairly
accurate!
So, how can we empower our
people and ensure that they want to go ‘above and beyond’ consistently and
continually?
We suggest in ‘Slow
Selling’, that all effective action should comply with 4 key principles of
human behaviour and motivation:
Beliefs
/ Emotions / Actions / Results
Here’s our suggestion on
how these 4 principles apply to the subject of ‘How to empower your people
effectively’.
- Beliefs: you have to have the genuine belief
that your people are independent beings in their own right, with independent
beliefs and emotions. This is just a part of their life: your job is to value,
support and motivate them so well that they want to go ‘above and beyond’ and
see their role as valuable and worthwhile, no matter what pay they’re getting.
- Emotions: you need to constantly listen to
their emotions: they are your number one customer: if you win their hearts and
affections, then they’ll do the same for your customers. If not, they won’t.
Constantly listen for ideas and steps you can take to make their life better or
easier, build a high trust environment and genuinely show that you care about
them as a person, NOT as a number on the payroll!
- Actions: look to ‘Go the extra inch’ on
continually taking action on the above information, and look to ‘Go the extra
inch’ in every interaction with them. They will judge you by your actions, NOT
by your intentions!
- Results: make sure you have effective ‘lead’
measures that focus on actions before results: your people will only get the
right results if they take the right actions: you need to identify and measure
or evidence the effective actions, and then ‘catch them doing it well’, affirm
them, let them grow, praise progress and hold them accountable step by step,
inch by inch.
Very
few organisations understand these key points or give serious budget or time to
them.
Instead,
they lose profits hand over first because their people are disengaged or
ineffective (and they don’t know this is going on, because no one is doing any
better!) Instead, they struggle on with reorganisations, HR initiatives and
short-term incentives.
Chasing
butterflies while the elephants are escaping …
For help in putting valuable and professional empowerment systems in place, and all ‘Slow Selling’ top tips and events, please join our mailing list or buy the book or contact us for bespoke advice.
These are some of the principles and questions we address in Slow Selling: please click here to join our top tips and updates list or, if you have a question regarding your situation and would like a simple answer, drop us a line at support@wordpress-983538-3474751.cloudwaysapps.com