Empowering employees means giving your people the opportunity to succeed: the right tools, clear systems, and the trust to make decisions without you. You set the standard, build checklists that show what done looks like, and then step back like a coach. To know if it is working, ask your team directly.
- Empowerment is the more energetic version of delegation. You hand over trust and tools along with the task.
- Lead like a coach. Train people, equip them, let them make the play, and give them the credit.
- Inspect what you expect. Checklists and green lights give people freedom with accountability.
- Ask your team if they feel empowered, and treat every honest answer as a hole in your boat you can fix.
What does empowering employees mean?
My co-host Arturo Gomez has led teams for 25 years. For him, leadership comes down to two words: inspiring and empowering. His plain definition of empowerment is a question your people could ask you. Are you giving me the opportunity to have success?
Empowerment is giving people the opportunity to have success.
I think of empowering people as the more energetic version of delegation. You surround yourself with people who are the best at what they do, and you trust them to do it.
Why is empowering employees important?
Arturo has watched organizations flourish to extremely high levels when leaders make inspiring and empowering the priority. The payoff shows up in two places.
- Better outcomes A team with the right tools gets better results, and the whole organization gains efficiency.
- Happier people Empowered teammates feel fulfilled and enjoy what they do every day.
How do you empower employees?
- Surround yourself with driven people. Put each person's unique skills in the right place on the boat.
- Give them the right tools. People can only succeed with what they need to do the job.
- Build systems and checklists. Make clear what done looks like, so people can move without waiting on you.
- Step back and pass the credit. Let them make the play, then give them the win.
- Ask how it feels. Check whether people feel empowered, and fix what they tell you.
How do you empower your team like a coach?
Arturo's lens is the coach. A great coach is unselfish, and the whole job is to put the right people in position to perform. Bill Belichick was never the one throwing the touchdown pass. He trained his players all week, gave them the tools, and let them play. After a win, the credit goes to the athletes. That mindset sits at the heart of the coaching leadership style.
What is the difference between empowerment and micromanagement?
Micromanagement is the inverse of empowerment. Many newer leaders treat the business as their baby and end up micromanaging everything for everybody. Empowering people is a learned trait. I lean on systems, processes and core values to guide the work, so I am free from making every decision.
A quote I love draws the line: you inspect what you expect. I think of checking work as accountability and performance, with checks and balances that act as green lights so everyone knows when the work is done right.
| The moment | Micromanagement | Empowerment |
|---|---|---|
| A decision comes up | It waits for the leader. | Systems and core values guide it. |
| Checking the work | The leader hovers over every task. | A checklist gives the green light. |
| A win | The leader takes the credit. | The team gets it, like a coach handing it to the players. |
| Something breaks | Blame. | Find the hole in the boat and fix it. |
How do checklists help empower employees?
It is far easier to perform at a high level when you can open a checklist, go check, check, check, and get a green light.
I learned this running my content marketing agency, where we helped brands market to sports fans. Picture turning one hour-long podcast into 40 short videos for a client, each with captions and graphics. Making one is easy. Making ten a week for four weeks is where small errors creep in.
It is why I call my podcasting process One Perfect Podcast. You publish a thousand episodes by running the same process a thousand times in a row, and everyone knows exactly the beat they need to hit.
How do you know if your employees feel empowered?
Ask them. People will tell you the truth. Arturo's question is simple: do you feel like you are being empowered to do your job? Honest answers depend on trust, so keep building trust with your team.
When someone says they feel held back, get curious. Ask enough questions to understand what that answer really means. Arturo finds there is almost always some truth in it. Sometimes a real gap needs correcting, and sometimes you define the right tools differently. Either way, the conversation gets you closer.
I call this finding the holes in your boat. Hearing where you fall short is uncomfortable, and great leaders go looking for it anyway.
When you find the holes in your boat, you can fix them and build a better boat.
Rob Cressy, Episode 60
How does AI help you empower employees?
The right tools now include AI. Go first as the leader, then put the tools in your team's hands. About 20 hours of hands-on practice gets anyone going. Let AI handle first drafts so your people do more with less, faster, while the judgment stays human. Be open about where AI is used and why. Start with AI for leaders.
Do this today
- Run the audit. Ask the people around you if they feel they have the proper tools to succeed.
- Write one checklist. Pick a task your team repeats and create your first checklist for it.
Listen to the episode
Importance of Empowering Your Team
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Questions people ask
What are examples of empowering employees?
Giving people the right tools, building checklists so they can work without waiting for approval, and passing them the credit when they win.
Is checking someone's work a form of micromanagement?
Checking against a clear standard is accountability. Rob Cressy calls it inspecting what you expect: checklists and green lights tell everyone when the work is right.
How do you ask employees if they feel empowered?
Ask directly: do you feel like you are being empowered to do your job? Arturo Gomez recommends following any hesitant answer with curious questions until you understand what is missing.
What is the difference between delegating and empowering?
Delegating moves a task to someone else. Rob Cressy describes empowering as the more energetic version, where you also give people the trust, tools and systems to own the result.
Full transcript
Episode 60: Importance of Empowering Your Team
Welcome to Leadership DNA, a podcast for those who inspire to be a better leader. Along set Arturo Gomez I'm Rob Cressy. Today's topic the importance of empowering your team members and Arturo empowering those you work with is both obvious as well as nuanced and the key is how you empower them as well as the energy and minds that you bring to the table about it.
Yeah, that's right. I mean I think for me leadership is about inspiring and empowering those are two words that I think resonate certainly with me and I would say are probably two adjectives words descriptors that I think detail my life in leadership positions that organizations will flourish to really you know extremely high levels when leaders emphasize that or there is to inspire and to empower. I think you know the other thing is that the organization the outcome for the organization is ultimately going to be better when you have a team of people that are empowered that are given the right tools to actually have success. The other thing the other the other thing that's achieved there is that when you have when you're doing this you traditionally not only are gonna get those efficiencies within the organization you're also gonna get really happy fulfilled staff members that are enjoying what they're doing and you know I don't you know I'm sure you're the same way Rob it's like I don't I don't want people around me to think that whenever we come together in a that it has to be that it's quote unquote work you know it's I spend more time with these individuals than I do with my family and so to me it should be a manner of treating people with guidance that allows them to be the best you know best versions of themselves. Yeah 100% now yes in that because so much of what I do and what I've designed around my life is for worked not feel like work because I can create a culture in a mission for what we are doing and for me so much of what I do is all around growth in helping people create better lives for themselves and everything around them. So I naturally surround myself with very inspiring people driven people mission driven people where they each have unique skill sets I'm gonna put them in the right places on the boat to where we can all be doing this together and quite frankly I want to empower those who are around me who are the best of what they do and it's something that is a learned trait and for a lot of people who are newer in this game the difference between this is air quotes my baby my business and micromanaging everything for everybody versus we've talked about delegation and I think empowering people is sort of the more energetic version of all of this. I don't want to be doing everything by designing we just talked about this or a thorough I don't want to make every decision I don't want to have to do everything because we're gonna have systems and processes and core values for how we're doing things and we want to do so in a way where we're really enjoying ourselves because we are creating very high level everything and for me that's a standard of excellence that my attention to detail and all that I do is because I know that one this is why somebody works with our companies is because we are so good at what I do and the number two are thorough I know there's people like you who are up who are living this standard and I know that you're doing things at the highest level so I want to continue to do things in the highest level and as part of that we have to empower the people who are around us to do those things to allow us to create amazing results.
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