Empower employees to act on their own. If you talk to my employees, you’ll probably find out that some of them, especially on the higher levels of management, I don’t tell them a lot [about what to do]. I set them out there and see what they do. They can always come and check with me but empower them to make decisions but also to make mistakes.
Employees, managers, leaders — they all have to develop their own style on how to run various aspects of our organization, and my style doesn’t work for other people, necessarily, so I think they have to find their own.
Part of it is to allow them to make the decisions that are sometimes wrong. As a matter of fact, sometimes it’s good for me not to be around because I don’t want to stop them from making decisions.
As long as it doesn’t ruin the company, for example, I consciously let people do things that are wrong just because you learn a lot from that.
Let people do it their way. You have to do it by example. I don’t know how else you would do it. It’s almost like if you were always working in the same room with the boss, they do things a certain way and that’s how they would do it, and they almost can’t help themselves.
So if I was hanging around with you all day and you were working with me, I would almost feel like I’d have to jump in.
It’s hard sometimes, depending on your personality … to be able to step away and let them operate, even though you would do it differently.
That’s why sometimes it’s best not to be there. Sometimes, I’ll send people to meetings that, in the past, I might have gone to. I consciously don’t go there so they can’t look to me for the answers; they have to make the decisions and know that I trust them to go forward.
Otherwise, they tend to go back to me, what I would do. If I’m not there, they can’t ask that question.
You have to do it by example.
Work with employees when they make mistakes. If they do something that doesn’t work out, then we sit down and talk about that and redo it.
Go over it and restudy it, just so you can learn something from it.
How to reach: Oriana House Inc., (330) 535-8116 or www.orianahouse.org
