Let me share a few ways to get started.

Give Responsibility with Authority

This may be the most accurate definition of empowerment – at least in the context of work. Yet I’m frequently surprised at how many managers miss this. Giving responsibility without authority is no different than dictating. That’s not to say it’s never appropriate, but employees who grow accustomed to taking orders won’t be prepared to step up in a pinch. Make it a practice to give authority, even when it means giving up some control. Constantly look for opportunities to delegate decisions regarding “how.”

Develop Their Competence

Gone are the days when the leader can be expected to provide the full extent of an employee’s training needs. In the knowledge age, employees are expected to bring certain skills and education with them. By the same token, the amount of skills employees need to remain “competent” in their role continues to expand. If you need your employees to be more capable tomorrow than they are today, you’ll need to make their ongoing development a priority (with a plan), regardless of where the development comes from.

Build the Team

In The Secret of Teams, Mark Miller describes high performance teams as those that can function without the active presence of the leader. Each team member knows his or her role, but is also keenly aware of the overarching goals of the team and closely connected with the other team members and external stakeholders. This obviously requires a lot more from both the leader and the team members. If your team can’t function without your direct involvement, you have room to grow in this area.

Build Their Confidence

Employees tend to receive more responsibility once the manager has confidence in them. This is another oversight. An employee’s self-confidence is at least as important, especially when undertaking a new challenge. Once the excitement of the new opportunity wears off, it can be quickly replaced with a sense of “conscious incompetence” – that is, an awareness of a lack of ability. The next phase is a critical period – and can be drastically influenced by positive and constructive feedback received from the manager.

Until your employees are confident in themselves, they won’t be able to make the next step.

Design the Infrastructure

“No matter how emphatically you tell me to [insert directive], it won’t magically make [insert infrastructure prerequisite] exist.”

Have you ever had to have this conversation with a superior? Ever been the guilty boss? True, employees can all be lazy or uncreative at times (that is to say, we’re all human). But issuing orders without understanding the infrastructure requirements is just as lazy. Empowering others means removing the barriers to their success, not ignoring them.

Empowering your employees requires a high degree of effort. Moreover, it won’t always turn out the way you hope. But no matter how proactive your employees are, they can’t completely empower themselves. Do yourself a favor as a manager of people. Go the extra mile. You’ll be the primary beneficiary.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Mindsets

Mindsets are crucial since they drive behavior. Therefore it follows that if we can change the way people think, their behavior will change as well. But you can’t get there without first identifying the current mindsets that exist as well as the ones you want to replace them with. Maybe employees see training as on-the-clock vacation and you want them to see it as a critical part of their development. Maybe they view leadership as the ability to fight fires and you want leadership to be viewed as the ability to manage proactively so that fires don’t occur. Or they could they see leadership as the ability to execute tasks and instead you want leadership to be seen as the ability to empower others to execute. It could be any number of things, technical or strategic. The key question to identify is: how does the organization (or department or team) think currently and how should it think differently?

Processes & Infrastructure

The temptation at this point is to develop a communication campaign or training to convince everyone of the benefits the new mindsets will bring to the organization. But just identifying new mindsets (no matter how good they are) is not enough. They need the supporting processes and infrastructure to be in place to make the change possible.

To illustrate, imagine a mayor of a city speaking fervently about the benefits of public subway transportation. It will save people money, use less gas and open up access to different parts of the metro area. You are sold. The only problem is, the city doesn’t actually have any tracks (no supporting infrastructure). Or, if they do, you have to fill out 10 forms, navigate a complicated website and wait six months to get your pass approved (exasperating process). So you simply stick with driving. That’s what happens when your processes and infrastructure don’t support the new mindsets. As good as it may be, people won’t embrace a change that doesn’t work.

Roles & Responsibilities

Ultimately, a new culture change is still just wishful thinking until everyone is given responsibility for embodying it at their level. While mindsets drive behavior, behavior is much easier to measure. And ultimately, changed behavior should translate into new business results (also measurable). Whether the new behaviors and results become integrated into performance objectives or business analytics, they need to be visible, not as sticks, but carrots. What gets recognized and rewarded gets repeated. Remember Zig Ziglar’s mantra, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Show people how embracing the new mindsets, utilizing the new (or existing) processes and infrastructure and accepting the new roles and responsibilities will not only improve the culture of the organization, but will set them up for success as well.

In all of this, what we can’t allow ourselves to forget is Miller’s last point: model it. If the leaders in any organization don’t model the change they’re selling, no implementation strategy will sell it for them. So see and shape the future, but don’t forget to always embody the values. Actions will always speak louder than words.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.