Empower Your staff by Arthur Cooper (c) Copyright 2005 http://www.arthurcooper.com/ If you are a manager you should be managing. You should not be doing
jobs of your staff. You should be operating at a level above – directing work, receiving results, interfacing with your boss, etc.. Too many managers find themselves at coalface when they should be directing operations from surface. To avoid this you must empower your staff. Give them space they need to operate on their own initiative and trust them to do a good job. The majority of people will do a good job if given power, responsibility, and recognition.
When you delegate a responsibility make sure that you do it fully. Don’t do it in words only. Don’t say to someone ‘you are responsible for this’ and then try to control every little step along way. Give him job and then let him get on with it.
Someone who is checked and watched closely at every moment soon learns that he is not trusted. He learns that he is not relied on to do a good job when left to himself. Eventually he adopts attitude of ‘why bother’. Why bother to be careful when someone else is again and again going over every little thing that he does?
