How Much Autonomy Do Your Team Members Have in Their Roles?
Read More
How Much Autonomy Do Your Team Members Have in Their Roles?
Receive Free Access to all Blog Posts
The more you trust your team members to organize and make decisions by themselves, the more time you will free up for other important activities for your business or/and in your personal life.
Increasing their job autonomy is in their best interest too, because their motivation is higher when they are not just following instructions, but contributing and putting their own mark on their work. They engage more not only because they are participating, but because they decide on themselves what to do, how to carry out their activities, or how to solve the challenges in their jobs.
What Can You Do to Increase Your Employees’ Autonomy in Their Jobs?
Some employees may be used to working independently and making different types of decisions in their jobs, while others may lack the experience or confidence to do so.
Besides experience and confidence, the employee also needs to have the goodwill to make decisions that serve the best interests of the business. This aspect is also a matter of trust between the leader and the team member, and vice versa.
Let’s look at some ways you can increase your employees’ ability to make decisions in their jobs:
Ask them to always think themselves about solutions when they encounter issues in their activities, even when they don’t yet have permission to make decisions on their own.
This way, before they discuss an issue with you or with their direct supervisor, they already thought of it. Because they are directly involved, they may know the most details about the issue and could have good ideas to overcome it. Ask them how they would solve the problem and give them feedback, so they understand whether their solutions are effective or need to be revised. Over time, they will become better at this.
Encourage them to collaborate with their peers. Sometimes an issue can be solved with the help of a colleague, without needing to discuss it with you.
Also, ask them to keep these collaborations transparent to you, so you know each employee’s contribution, the status of the issue, and when you might need to get involved in their discussions. In this way, you can improve their collaboration if it’s not working well and set expectations for future collaborations.
In case you have an employee with whom you plan his or her daily or weekly activities, ask them to organize their activities and present them to you for approval. In time, after more discussions and feedback, they will understand how to organize themselves better and how to carry out their activities.
Reduce the number of meetings you have with your employees to check the status of their activities as they become more experienced. Even if, in the past, you had to check – for example, on a daily basis – how an employee is performing his or her tasks, once you see they are completing them successfully, reduce the supervision. You could ask for a daily or weekly activity report so you always know what they are doing.
Develop their skills by providing them with training or mentors. The more competent they are, the more you can trust them make decisions and managed themselves.
Encourage them to propose changes to internal procedures and processes if they have ideas to improve them, or if they observe issues. Procedures and processes are meant to help employees to do their jobs, but if these are not updated for new situations or if they reduce the employee efficiency, they fail to serve their purpose.
In this way, employees have more freedom to choose how they carry out their work. They also contribute more significantly to the company’s results. One small change in a single process can bring big substantial improvements for the company.
Until now, we’ve talked about how to increase employees’ competencies and help them grow, so they can become more independent in their work.
But, as mentioned before, another important factor in increasing your employees’ autonomy is your trust in them. No matter how competent an employee is, if you don’t trust him or her, will you give them the freedom to make decisions?
What Can You Do to Build Trustful Relationships with Your Team Members?
Even if building trustful relationships is a ”two-way street’’, as a leader, you set the tone of the relationships with your team members.
Some key behaviours that will help you build trust are:
Keep your word. If you’ve promised something to an employee, keep your promise, even when it is a small thing. Or if you planned something with him/her, honor what you have agreed on. Require the same from your employees.
Yes, sometimes we need to change our plans and show flexibility, but if these situations become the norm rather than exceptions, they will create uncertainty, confusion, and, of course, a lack of trust.
Be impartial and ensure equity.
For example, if you have two employees with similar levels of competence and performance, but you give only one of them the opportunity to a higher position, this would not be fair to the other employee, who may also want the same opportunity.
Inequities will reduce or undermine an employee’s confidence that he or she will be treated fairly. Besides this, inequities can lead to withdrawal, lack of engagement, and behaviours through which the employee tries to correct the unfairness they believe has been done to them.
Be available for your employees. Encourage them to communicate with you when they face difficult situations, so you know when they need help or support.
Give constructive feedback and avoid criticism.
Frequent criticism can make some people hide their mistakes or the things that they know others don’t like, in order to avoid unpleasant feelings. Often, as a protective mechanism, we don’t even hear everything the person criticizing us is saying, and we tend to reject the message.
Through constructive feedback, we learn what we did well, what we need to improve or how to repair our mistakes. We also get to hear the other person’s perspective and reasons for requesting certain things, while our self-esteem is protected. More than that, we have the opportunity to learn and grow.
Recognize your mistakes so they know you are honest with them and take responsibility for your actions. In this way, you set the example for the expected behaviour from them in similar situations.
Acknowledge your team members’ contributions and successes, and avoid taking credit for their ideas or work. If their efforts go unnoticed or unappreciated, why should they continue adding value in this way, right?
How many of these strategies and key behaviours do you apply in your relationships with your team members?
If all of them, good job 🙂 If just some of them, or just sometimes, you could print this blog post and put it somewhere where you can see it. Check daily if your interactions with your team members and your decisions related to them are aligned with these strategies. You could also add other useful tactics or behaviours to this list that you think will help you increase your employees’ autonomy in their roles.
In this way, you create a plan that will guide you day-by-day. Only when we set ourselves up to achieve something we can actually take action to accomplish it. Otherwise, we’ll probably forget about it or we put it aside until we think we have time.
Can you afford to put this aside? Every time you resist taking action in this direction, think what you’ll gain by acting and what you’ll lose if you don’t.
Want to have more motivated employees?
The ONLINE PROGRAM:
How To Motivate Your Employees So They Care For Your Business And Help You Grow It
HAS YOUR BACK. It covers that along with other key aspects of employees’ motivation.
