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Best Practices to Empower Your Salespeople

Name: Best Practices to Empower Your Salespeople
Uploaded: 2021-06-04T14:16:56+00:00
Duration: 2 min 32 s
Channel: Henning Schwinum
Description: The speaker (Henning Schwinum) defines empowerment in the workplace as enabling teams to reach defined goals autonomously, often visible when a leader…

4 Jun 2021 · 3 min

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2:32

The speaker (Henning Schwinum) defines empowerment in the workplace as enabling teams to reach defined goals autonomously, often visible when a leader deliberately removes themselves (e.g., travel or day off) to signal trust. The transcript emphasizes that perceived empowerment by employees matters for trust, but research shows mixed effects on performance—especially for routine tasks—and that empowerment can be interpreted negatively if seen as leader abdication. Recommended best practices include setting achievable, aligned targets; establishing ethical guardrails (pricing, customization) to preserve consistency and transparency; minimizing changing priorities and administrative burdens; and staying available when guidance is requested. The segment closes with a call-to-action about using a fractional or interim sales leader to support empowerment.

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To empower is one of those business buzzwords. It is also one of those leadership strategies that many claim to embrace, but few really do. So what is it in a work setting? My own definition is that empowerment allows a team of people to achieve defined goals without explicit leadership intervention, and as each individual operates autonomously within their set of assigned responsibilities. The best example I can think of is to physically remove yourself as a leader from the team. Travel, work from home, take a day off and leave behind an explicit statement of trust, for example. You make the decision and let everybody know. However, if empowerment is not the objectively measurable action of physically removing yourself, more importantly it is the perception of the team, their feeling of being empowered, that matters. Employees are more likely to trust leaders who they perceive as empowering. Now there's also research showing that feeling empowered doesn't always boost performance, especially around routine tasks. And there's research that shows it may be seen as evidence that the leader cannot lead and is trying to avoid making difficult decisions. Empowerment is not a magic silver bullet, rather something to be applied with thought and intent. And some of those best practices to use are to set targets that are achievable, that are aligned within the team to set guardrails based on strong ethical and moral values, for example around pricing decisions or product customization to maintain stability, consistency, and transparency. Empowerment does not work in an environment that changes priorities daily to minimize administrative tasks and to offer support. Always be available when your guidance as a leader is asked for. Contact us to find out how a fractional or interim sales leader can support the empowerment of your team.