The foundation of trust and honesty all stems from understanding your employee as a person. What do they value, what do they enjoy, and what is important to them?
Once you understand your employee as a person, you are equipped to create a culture that enables them to perform better and allow for them to be happier.
Kyle believes you should strive to “empower” your people to run their business as they wish. This enables them to shape their days in a way that supports what they most value - however, this requires trust from you as their manager.
Kyle believes that when you empower an employee to operate in a way that best fits their lives and values, it encourages them to go the extra mile, which will benefit the business, you and themselves.
He shares his tips on how to empower your employees:
To effectively empower people, you need to provide them with a way to improve their job. Now, this doesn't mean you give them loads of work and ask them to get it done. It's about stretching their capabilities. Give them something that makes them slightly uncomfortable, and allow them to tackle it.
This supports their development and growth as a professional and keeps them engaged by not becoming bored with the "basics" of the job.
When it comes to stretching them, Kyle provides an example:
At his workplace, a junior employee's basics are analysing financial statements, writing credit papers for committees, or writing pitch decks. However, empowering/stretching his employees would be getting them to be involved in those pitches and to be involved in them structuring conversations with the clients.
In business, there will be an overlap of teams where people are needing to collaborate to get work done. Therefore, all the involved teams and individuals need to be aligned with an overarching core set of values and "rules".
This will help empower all the employees and understand what's expected when people work together. This enables people to work together and collaborate effectively with a "ruleset" that allows the independence of hierarchy. If there is a misalignment or misunderstanding, people can use the expected rules and values to operate and overcome the challenges they face together.
When someone in your team has a great idea, and it's implemented, you must publicly celebrate their success and recognise their contribution as their manager. If it's an organisation that caters to clients, not only must you let your leaders know but also the clients. It would be best if you never took credit for their work because they're "junior".
After all, they are working hard to deliver for you and should be recognised for these efforts. Empower them to stretch themselves but then ensure that they are rewarded and recognised, so they will likely give the same effort in the future.
Avoid the tendency to justify your contributions to a project and find satisfaction in the progress and success of your people.
To watch the full interview, and all our other Manager Masterclasses head over to - https://10xmanagers.com/mii-view/kyle-pearse
