Empowering Others to Act

The third element to Kouzes's and Posner's, The Leadership Challenge is the concept of enabling others to take action.  Learning this skill can take some patience, but it can pay huge dividends for you and your practice.    

Empower Others to Act
Effective leaders find ways to make others feel important and let them know their contributions matter. Gaining the support and assistance from those whom you lead creates human resource capital.  

Here are a few tips to help you empower others to act:

Recognition:   Giving your employees recognition for their work is very empowering.   Good leaders set the course for the business, then let their people make it happen.  It is very important to understand to "recognize the effort," not just the result.  By effectively empowering your employees, you cultivate the environment for innovation.

Decision Making:   Allowing your staff to make decisions creates power.  Staff members very often indentify better business processes within the practice.  Too often, these processes are not implemented because the staff does not feel it is "their place" to suggest the change.  It is your responsibility as the leader, to encourage decision making. 

Important Work:    Your staff needs to know their work is important.  Every role within a medical practice is important.  Make sure that when you delegate a project, you let your employee know your expectation and that this work is needed, not just busy-work. Lastly, make sure their staff has all the tools and proper training to do their jobs.  

Team Building:   Connecting your employees as team members is critical.  There are many resouces available discussing the value of teams and team building.  Getting started with understanding behavioral traits is a good place to start.

Actions that will help you empower others to act are:

• Always say we
  
• Create the interaction between individuals, e.g., front office with the back office
  
• Look toward the wins; do not dwell on the losses
  
• Develop work teams that are involved with the planning and the problem solving
  
• Communicate; do not leave your employees in the dark
  
• Make their work valuable and critical to the success of the practice
  
• Do not micro-manage your followers; provide them with discretion and autonomy
  
• Be available for your team(s)
  

* Adapted from The Leadership Challenge, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner