How to empower employees to make decisions is one of the hardest tasks many managers face. After all, you have been promoted to the management ranks in part because you are a good decision maker, yet your time each day to make decisions is limited.

I take you through 7 actions to take to empower employees to make decisions with confidence.

4 great reasons to empower employees to make decisions:

1. So you gain more time back in your day
2. For you to focus on more value adding activities
3. To increase employee engagement by up to three times
4. To increase the work ethic and results ownership of your team

Employee empowerment is very useful for you personally as a manager, especially as your team grows and your confidence as a manager increases. Plus many of your employees are closer to the coal face than you, so it makes sense to delegate decision making where there is low impact on the business and these decisions are routine.

Before you empower team members and start building their decision making skills, it makes a lot of sense to embed the goals of the team with each person making decisions so the overall team continues to move in the same direction towards achieving common goals. Defining which decisions will be made by whom is also important to manage the risk of decision making appropriately. By creating a framework for decision making in the team you are also giving authority to team members to make specific types of decision.

To enable better decision making, key ways to empower employees are to share information relevant to the decisions they are making. Data and insights give them the tools to make better decisions.

Don’t throw your employees in at the deep end. Start delegating the decisions that have a small impact on the business or are simpler to make a good decision, and as their decision making skills improve, move them on to more difficult decisions. This progressive approach will build their confidence and decision making skills and manage business risk.

One of the toughest parts of empowering employees in the workplace is resisting the temptation to make the decision on behalf of the employee. There will be times when the employee will in effect ask you to make the decision – this is easier and less scary for them – don’t fall into this trap.

And finally, make the time to coach employees through their decision making. This provides vital support and guidance for them during the process AND keeps you informed of each step allowing you to avert poor decisions. Coaching allows you to do this WITHOUT taking the responsibility away from the employee to make the decision.

Make the time and effort to empower employees to make decisions and you will be able to significantly leverage your time and skills freeing you up to move your career forward!

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