Better Empower Your Team: 2 Keys for Optimum Engagement

What Empowering Employees Can Do for Your Company
To truly empower your team, give them the authority to make decisions and take action in their roles. When implemented thoughtfully, employee empowerment helps take teams to the next level.

Employees who feel a genuine sense of ownership and control over their work become more invested in their outcomes. This sense of accountability amplifies their ability to contribute meaningfully to both their team and the organization. Empowered employees care more, push themselves further, and consistently deliver higher performance.

Employee Engagement Research Backs This Up
Employees who witness meaningful action following an engagement survey are twelve times more likely to be engaged the next year. Higher engagement, in turn, drives measurable results:

• 18% greater productivity
• 12% higher customer satisfaction
• 51% less voluntary turnover
• Increased discretionary effort, advocacy, and loyalty

The challenge isn’t generating more tasks — it’s empowering your team effectively. Simply piling on unsupervised responsibilities risks disengagement and undermines your role as a leader. True empowerment requires guidance, clarity, and the authority to act with purpose.

One Way to Empower Effectively
In our action learning leadership development workshops, many leaders describe their role as serving two critical functions:

• Managing WHAT gets done – ensuring goals, priorities, and outcomes are achieved.
• Managing HOW work gets done – shaping the processes, behaviors, and culture that drive sustainable performance.

Managing WHAT Gets Done
In this role, managers must set clear, meaningful goals, ensure employees understand what’s expected, and provide the resources and support needed for success. We often use the framework Mandated, Guided, and Autonomous to define boundaries and manage expectations — helping employees know where they have the freedom to take initiative and why.

From there, managers evaluate performance, deliver constructive feedback, and offer guidance as needed. In short, managing what gets done means giving employees clarity on strategic priorities, their role, and the rules of the game — while equipping them with the competence and confidence to succeed.

Managing HOW Work Gets Done
The other critical role of a manager is to create a work environment optimized for peak performance. This involves ensuring the right people are in the right roles and that the way work is executed, rewarded, tracked, and measured aligns fully with your organizational goals. Misalignment in any of these areas erodes engagement and undermines productivity.

To truly empower your team, your workplace culture must inspire behaviors that reflect the company’s mission, vision, and values—motivating employees to contribute in ways that drive meaningful impact.

The Bottom Line
Striking the right balance between these two roles is essential. The most effective leaders seamlessly integrate the “what” and the “how,” ensuring employees are both capable and motivated to perform at their best. When done right, empowerment fuels engagement — creating a win for employees, teams, managers, and the organization alike.  Knowing how important engagement is, are you doing all you can as a leader to empower your team?

To learn more about how to improve employee engagement, download Research Report – The Surprising Relationship Between Employee Engagement and Manager Effectiveness