WEBINAR - Removing the Barriers to Greater Empowerment

The Drive for Greater Empowerment

A key aspiration for the hybrid workforce is greater employee flexibility and more agile ways of working. However in order to achieve this, leaders will need to empower their people.  To thrive as we move out of lockdown, organisations will need to rebuild trust, create a ‘psychologically safe’ environment and put in place the right support to enable autonomy to flourish.

Hybrid working is a key driver for greater empowerment.  Fewer teams are now co-located and there’s (an even greater) need to trust and enable people to deliver without that constant supervision and direction…

Whilst a directive style of leadership and close supervision was perhaps important at the outset of the crisis, if we are to enable greater autonomy and allow learning to take place then we need to ‘turn off the SatNav’ (do watch the recording opposite to hear the SavNav analogy!).  Leaders perhaps need to consider a more coaching style of leadership if we are to push decisions closer to the customer, work in more agile ways and really open up to innovation.

The Benefits of Greater Empowerment

This webinar explored what it means for leaders to empower others and how true empowerment can ultimately lead to benefits of increased motivation, creativity, learning and agility in the workforce.

Whilst there are a number of potential inhibitors to empowerment, we focused on four ‘overlooked’ barriers:

1. Perceptions of leadership
2. Fear
3. Process
4. Silent Communicators

Mike illustrated each area with examples of what these look like in practice and then shared a model which can help leaders think about how to remove the blockers.  A particularly interesting, perhaps least known, barrier is the Silent Communicators – what are those aspects in your organisation that are silently communicating something completely different to what is being advocated?  Watch the recording to hear some examples of what might be holding you back from a culture of empowerment.

Empowerment is… “having the ability, resources and authority to take decisions in order to deliver role outcomes”

Our lead presenter was Mike Thackray, a Principal Consultant at OE Cam. Mike has a passion for helping leaders to develop better ways to achieve great outcomes through empowering and engaging others.  Mike was supported by Toni Marshall who introduced the session and chaired questions.

A recording of this webinar can be viewed opposite.  To download a copy of the slide deck, see the link below or to talk through how to apply this model in your own organisation, please contact mike.thackray@oecam.com