As
a business advisor at Violand Management, I coach restoration and cleaning
business owners. I see this every day. Most small business owners struggle with
removing themselves from the day to day operations of their business. Whether
it is intentional or not, they fail to hold their staff accountable for making
their own decisions because they enable their employees to stay dependent on
the owner and not think for themselves. This causes owners to be consistently
interrupted by their employees who bombard them with their problems but lack
solutions. They don’t realize that, to
avoid this and release the dependency of the company on themselves, they need
to train their staff to make decisions on their own which would free up the
owner’s time to handle their own responsibilities instead of the
responsibilities of those to which they pay salaries. The most common question
I get is: “How do I empower others in my company to make decisions?”
I
tell them to master the art of asking “What do you think?” Depending on the
employee’s answer, the owner can still influence their decision, but it forces
the employee to start thinking and acting for themselves as well as become
accountable for putting his/her maximum effort into making sure the decision
was the right one.
What
are some other ways you have found that help your employees think for themselves?
