Team work: authority and empowerment

Thinking about authority and empowerment in your team can be illuminating and has a range of benefits from improving decision making to increasing access and diversity. It can also be challenging so needs to be done with care and consideration. We outlined a number of prompts for this section in the teamwork canvas we shared the other week.

• What decisions can your team take and what decisions do you need to refer to others?
• When do you need to consult or inform others?
• What commitment is expected from your team members?

It might be helpful to make the starting point a reflection on how decisions are made in your team – are they driven by the most senior team members, do they happen by consensus, or are people across the team delegated authority for decisions in their areas?

There are obviously pros and cons to each approach:

Type	Pros	Cons
Senior decision maker	One person has holistic oversight Decisions can be made faster May mean strong trust in the individual Stakeholders and team have a single point of contact Team know who to go to for decisions	Can be disempowering for others Dependent on skills, knowledge, attitude and experience of an individual Can be set in their ways Can be a sign of weak trust in the team
Consensus	Team feels empowered Commitment to the decision when it’s made Decision is viewed from various angles and perspectives Strong trust across the group	Decision making can be slow Lack of clarity over who has the final say Confusion over the nature of the final decision
Delegated authority	Team members are empowered Decisions are made closest to the issue or opportunity Skills of team members are utilised Decisions are given to the person best placed to make them (may not be role specific) Avoids overload on an individual or small group	Lack of clarity over who is making which decision Danger decisions are overridden at the group or senior level May take more time Others feel need to scrutinise and micro-manage decisions of others

 

In an ideal world you’d probably want a mix of all three approaches, and it will vary according to the context and scale of the decision-making. Generally, the more that people are involved in your decision making processes the more likely they are to feel committed to the decision, the better their capabilities will be utilised, and there will be broader understanding of why decisions are made in the way they are.

Although I have been referring to decision making so far this sort of approach can also apply to idea generation too (given that the two are obviously connected). Who is ‘allowed’ to have ideas, and whose ideas get ignored? Do you have a culture where decisions or new ideas can be constructively challenged?

I once worked with an organisation where the Chief Executive was a veritable volcano of new ideas, they came thick and fast and erupted around the organisation. The challenge was that the rest of the senior team seldom knew which idea was going to be acted on so it served as a source of inertia for others. No-one else could do anything until the favoured idea was selected.

• Where do ideas come from in your organisation?
• How are decisions made?
• If I were to ask the newest member of your team how decisions were made, what might they say?

A well-recognised tool in the project management world that it might be useful to revisit is the RACI framework. It can be particularly useful if a team has been together for a while, just to help check assumptions and make sure all stakeholders are considered.

The basic idea is to map out who needs to be involved under four headings:

1. Responsible: the person who is doing the work or making the decision
2. Accountable: oversees the delivery of the work and answers to others for its successful completion
3. Consulted: others who need to know about the work and will have some input.
4. Informed: Kept up to date with progress, they may be affected by the work but not directly involved.

You can list out those involved by job title, but if you do it by name it helps make it feel more personal. You may come across other, extended versions:

• RASCI: the ‘S’ = ‘Support’
• RACIO: the ‘O’ = ‘Out of the Loop’ or ‘Omitted’
• RACI-VS: the ‘V’ = ‘Verify’ and the ‘S’ ‘Signatory’

Empowerment

 I did a very quick Twitter poll of what people thought the characteristics of an empowered team were (thanks to everyone who shared!), they were varied but there were definitely some common themes:

• Values and goals led
• Learning
• Respect
• Questioning
• Supportive
• Diverse viewpoints
• More equality than hierarchy
• Communicative
• Creativity

Not forgetting regular cake sharing! Given  this prolonged period of working apart it’s important to remember the social side of being a team and remember to have some fun!

Here’s some suggestions from for me, if you have others do add them to the comments below.

 

• Potency: confidence in its authority and effectiveness. Trusting each other
• Meaningfulness: cares about results and is motivated by its work together. Works towards a common goal but keeps the path to its delivery open and flexible, has the authority to make decisions
• Autonomy: free to make decisions. Open – to new ideas, lines of communication, challenge, and approaches
• Impact: the team contributes to the achievements of the organisation and each other
• Encouraging:
  • Supports each other
  • Allows for personal development and collective learning
  • Focuses on strengths

Try having a conversation with your team to see what characteristics you come up with collectively. You can always write out an extensive list and discuss each one in turn, try to come up with your top ten list. Notice those you reject and why.

Once you have your top ten think about how you would rank your team against each one. Where are you doing really well? Where would you like to improve? Does a particular team member take care of one of the areas for the group?

Being able to discuss your collective characteristics and be open about your views is a good indicator that you’ve been building an empowered team.