Empowerment in projects

Why modern leadership must focus on personal responsibility

Empowerment: more than just a buzzword with a feel-good factor

For many people, empowerment sounds like office esoterica. However, it is actually based on a serious management approach: employees are consciously empowered to make their own decisions and carry out their tasks with a high degree of personal responsibility. In theory, this sounds simple. In practice, it presents managers with new challenges. Traditional hierarchies, in which the project manager decides everything, only work in exceptional cases. Dynamic projects, agile teams and networked forms of work require quick decisions and flexibility. Empowerment means in this context: As a manager, I don’t give up power, I multiply it.

Why empowerment is crucial in the project environment

By definition, projects are goal-oriented, complex and often under time and cost pressure. It is therefore important that all team members not only carry out their tasks in a dull manner, but also think for themselves, think outside the box and, above all, act independently. Empowered team members are more motivated, make better decisions and actively contribute their strengths. This is not only good for the team atmosphere, but also has a direct impact on the success of the project.
An example: In agile projects, e.g. according to Scrum, empowerment is already an integral part because the team organizes itself, the product owner makes technical decisions and the Scrum Master removes obstacles. In other words, responsibility is distributed. And agile project management actually works extremely well in most cases.

Leadership in transition: from controller to coach

This fundamentally changes the role of the manager. Instead of being a controlling authority, they are becoming a coach or a person of trust. This sounds romantic at first, but it is a highly strategic development. Because empowerment does not mean “do something”, but rather: “You can do this and I will make sure that you can.”
This involves three central tasks that a manager should take on:

• Create transparency: Everyone in the team must know at all times where the project stands, what the goal is and how to get there. Because only if the individual team members know all the necessary data can they make good decisions quickly.
• Skills development: Those tasked with making decisions must not only know the right information, but also have the necessary tools to do so. This means that employees must be trained in all the skills they need to make well-founded decisions.
• Living trust: Empowerment fails when leadership cannot let go. This means that control should be replaced by clarity. Only if a manager trusts their employees completely can employees have the confidence to make decisions without the manager and without fear of making mistakes.

Risks and pitfalls of empowerment

As great as empowerment sounds at first, it is important to understand that it is not a free pass to simply act as you please. It is therefore important that clear roles, processes and expectations are defined to avoid chaos. Empowerment therefore requires a defined framework:

• Clear goals: Without a defined direction, self-organization cannot take place. Therefore, goals and expectations must be precisely defined in advance.
• Common rules of the game: To avoid conflicts within the team, it is also important to define who is allowed to make which decisions.
• Error culture: Empowered teams must also be allowed to fail without fear of recrimination, as mistakes contribute to the learning process. A good error culture is therefore of the utmost importance.
• Consistency: A popular misconception about empowerment is that it can be a one-off act and does not have to be an ongoing management style. Unfortunately, you can’t empower people once and then take responsibility again the next time a crisis arises. Not only do you lose the trust of the team, you also lose credibility.

How empowerment works in projects

What can managers do in concrete terms? Here are a few tried and tested approaches:

• Delegation with purpose: Tasks should not just be assigned. Rather, it is important to communicate them with purpose and impact so that employees know what they should focus on.
• Define decision-making scope and roles: Clear decision-making grids and role definitions help to avoid conflicts and uncertainties.
• Promote the development of skills: In order for team members to act independently, they need both technical and social skills. It is therefore important to first check whether they already have all the necessary skills and to offer training if important skills are missing.
• Establish feedback and learning loops: Just as in agile projects, it is also important to schedule regular retrospectives in the team in order to further develop empowerment and the team.
• Transparency through tools: Whether project progress, responsibilities or deadlines – it is important that all team members have access to the data that is important to them. Project management software, for example, can help to document such information and make it available to the team at all times.

Conclusion

Empowerment is not a nice-to-have, but a must-have in modern projects. Especially when projects are implemented in an environment in which requirements, technologies and teams are constantly changing, companies need employees who do not wait for instructions but actively help shape the projects. This requires courage to lead – and the will to share power.

However, empowerment only works if the framework conditions are right. This includes access to information, transparency about project goals and progress and a shared understanding of responsibility. The project management software myPARM ProjectManagement supports precisely this: it creates clarity, commitment and a good overview for everyone involved. Supplemented by the management software myPARM CorporateNavigator and the BI solution myPARM BI^actempowerment is digitally enabled and sustainably promoted.

Would you like to get to know the myPARM CorporateNavigator in a demo? Then make an appointment with us right away!