Our last blog began the discussion on the importance of Relationship Leadership by examining the first key behavior of effective leaders: Exemplify Personal Values and Integrity. It’s true that leaders in today’s modern workforce must be able to master critical relationship skills in order to achieve success and get things done on a day to day basis.

So much of what constitutes effective relationships between leaders and their employees begins with mutual trust and respect. In order for leaders to afford their employees the kind of necessary autonomy it takes to get work done, their workforce must feel empowered to act.

Inspire Empowerment through Purpose and Influence.

Empowerment is a term that has been rejected by many since first introduced in the 1980s. It lost its luster mainly because it was thought of as an entitlement by employees. “Good” managers thought they were obligated to “empower” employees. This led to near anarchy in some organizations.

Peter Block did an excellent job of defining empowerment in his book, The Empowered Manager. Peter stressed that empowerment is a decision made by the employee, not a gift given by managers. This choice is made by each individual who decides that his/her success fully lies within his/her own responsibility. If there are factors in the organization that inhibit an individual from achieving high performance, he/she is obligated to use influence to change or remove the obstacles. Empowered employees accept the full accountability and responsibility for personal and organizational success.

Leaders can inspire their employees to choose empowerment. It begins by creating a passion for their work and the work of the organization. Last week in this blog we explained how leaders base their relationship with others on the foundation of core, shared values. Leaders must use these values to give employees meaning in their work. This creates a sense of ownership in the business and further inspires employees to use influence to continuously improve their work and the work of others.

Are you inspiring a sense of ownership and empowerment in your workforce? What are you doing to give your employees meaning and purpose in the work they are doing? Are you able to gain the benefits of providing all of your employees with the level of empowerment they need to run their part of the business?

Visit our blog next week to learn the next key behavior for effective Relationship Leadership.

Tags: Focused and Aligned Leaders, High-Performance Leadership Model, Relationship Leadership

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.