These are general guidelines of the conditions that need to exist to empower a person or a team to complete a certain goals and objectives.
1) Specify the Desired Results
Openly discuss the results you expect. Be very specific about the quality and/or the quantity. Set a budget and a schedule. Commit people to getting the results, but let them determine the best methods and means. Set target dates or timelines for the accomplishment of the objectives. Work together to get the results that you and your people outline.
2) Set Some Guidelines
Communicate whatever principles, policies, and procedures are considered essential to getting the desired results. Mention as few procedures as possible to allow as much freedom and flexibility as possible. Guidelines should identify paths of failure that experience has identified as harmful to accomplishing organizational goals or maintaining organizational values.
Detect the Value
When identifying the paths of failure, identify what level of initiative a person has regarding different responsibilities: is this person to wait until told, or ask whenever they have a question, or study it out and then make a recommendation, or do it and report immediately, or do it routinely? In this way the expectations are clarified and the limits are set. In some areas of responsibility, the initiative levels would simply be wait until told, while in other areas, higher levels could be exercised, including, “Use your own good judgment and do what you think is appropriate; let us know routinely what you’re doing and what the results are.”
3) Identify Available Resources
Identify the various financial, human, technical, and organizational resources available to employees to assist them in getting the desired results. You may want to identify yourself or other people as resources and indicate how these can be used. You may want to set some limits on access or merely share your experiences and let the person decide how to benefit most from it.
4) Define Accountability
Results can be evaluated in three ways: measurement, observation, and discernment. Specify how you will evaluate performance. Also, specify when and how progress reports are to be made and accountability sessions held. When the trust level is high between the parties, people will be much tougher on themselves than a manager. When trust is high, discernment is often more accurate than so called objective measurement. That’s because people know in their own hearts much more than the measurement system can reveal about their performance.
5) Determine the Consequences
Reach an understanding of what follows when the desired results are achieved or not. Positive consequences might include financial and physic rewards, such as recognition, appreciation, advancement, new assignment, training, flexible schedule, leave of absence, enlarged scope of responsibility, perks, or promotion. Negatives might range from reprimand to retraining to termination.