Want to empower employees? Give away control!

Start small. And be very clear about what this giving away of control means. When you give away control, you give power to your employees to make decisions of their own. But this also comes with responsibilities. Start there.

Al little example to make it easier. Everybody knows doing a declaration at your company. This is easy, just surrendering a receipt of the purchase you did and you will get the money back to you with your next salary. Normally a manager will give a go if you like to buy something or they will check if the stuff you declared is within standards. They will then put it in the right category (IT stuff, customer expenses, something like that). Now you will empower your staff and quit the controlling bit. You just trust your employees that they will only buy stuff the company needs. By not controlling it, they are empowered, but they have the responsibility to put their declaration in the right category. The most important thing: if they did something wrong, they are responsible and will have to solve it themselves.

So this is the steps you can take to create more empowerment:

1. Choose a subject to where you like to loosen control. Or even better: ask your employees what is holding them back to be productive/innovative.
2. Discuss with your employees if they need and want this freedom.
3. Explain the consequences and the responsibilities this freedom brings.
4. If they still agree, start small. Experiment. First one team and if successful, scale. Just like we like it!