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Build relationships, Build Trust, Building Confidence, building trust, business, business advice, Culture, employee skills, Team Development
If you want to improve company culture within your business, one of the smartest moves you can make is to focus on empowerment leadership. Teams built upon a foundation of empowerment tend to achieve higher sales, succeed where others fail, and have reduced employee turnover rates.
But how do you build a sense of empowerment within your company if you don’t know where to start? There are a number of variables to improving company culture and growing a team bursting with pride and possibilities. Integrate the following leadership tips into your business development strategy and you’ll be amazed at how strong your team becomes.
Team Skill Development
Focus on helping each member of your team develop their skill sets. Be appreciative of the talents they already possess, but encourage them to reach outside their current comfort zone and acquire new skills. When every member of your team is continually offered new opportunities to grow as an employee, they learn to start operating from a place of “yes, I can do this” instead of “I don’t know how”. The more you help your staff become stronger employees with new talents in their repertoire, the likelier it is you will create a culture of confidence within your team.
Reward Team Inspiration
Integrating empowerment leadership into the fabric of your business is not a one-person job. As a business leader, you can’t be the only one attempting to empower your team. If you reward employees who lift others up and help their fellow team players become better workers, you encourage more of the same behavior. Employees begin to understand their efforts to inspire other team members will be rewarded, and not looked upon as an attempt to undermine leadership or climb the corporate ladder.
Encourage Exceeding Personal Expectations
Not all employees will naturally have confidence in their own abilities. Some will need extra coaxing to expand their current set of talents. Leaders who encourage all team members to exceed their personal expectations are often met with surprising results from even the most timid of employees. Helping your staff to want more from themselves and to take on tasks they don’t think they can accomplish without a little help provides them an opportunity to trust their abilities and accept help/training on an as-needed basis.
Present Opportunities to Succeed
Some staff members will be complacent in their approach to their careers. They won’t seek out opportunities and will be content to do what is asked of them without attempting to become better team members. If you make it your mission to offer opportunities to succeed to your employees, you make it darned near impossible to fail. Your staff members will grow accustomed to working in an environment where personal and professional growth opportunities are around every corner and will soon start to discover these opportunities for themselves.
Focus on Growth for All Employees
Professional growth isn’t something to be reserved for the ambitious on your team. Growth for all employees needs to be a cornerstone of your leadership mantra if you want to build a culture of confidence building. Learn to spot the meek among your team members and pair them with fellow employees who can help them become stronger team members. Not only will you be encouraging your meek and mild employees to grow, you will be helping stronger members of your team to improve their leadership skills in the process.
Incorporate Gratitude
Learn to incorporate gratitude into your workplace and you will help build a culture of empowerment. Team members who understand the power of gratitude are often the best employees to recognize the contributions of others within your company. Help your staff members to operate from a place of gratitude for the talents their teammates offer and you will automatically help employees realize how much their contributions are valued.
Negate Negativity
Many offices will have one or two team members who tend to focus on the negative aspects of situations. They see challenges instead of seeing opportunities. Understand who the negative players are on your team and make a consistent effort to help them re-train their approach to challenges. When these employees discover their negativity is consistently met with positive responses and opportunity seeking, they will learn to reduce their negative tendencies.
Empowerment leadership doesn’t come naturally for many business builders. Whether you are a small business owner or a startup CEO, you will need to consistently work on your leadership skills if you want to make confidence-building part of your company’s culture. It will take time, patience, and a willingness to learn from team mistakes, but the impact on your company (and your profits) can be substantial and long-lasting.