Time to embrace empowering leadership style

Since the last year pandemic outburst many employees had to change the way how they work. Instead of commuting to work or to face to face meetings communication moved online. Team collaboration became more planned and structured with less space for creativity. Online platforms save our time, but human interaction is irreplaceable. Employee motivation is impacted by limited personal interconnection and employees on various levels in organizations seriously consider career change. Many companies are aware of these negative effects, and some of them have gotten busy devising ways to counteract them.

Leadership style has enormous impact on motivation and attrition in the corporate culture, now even bigger because of social distancing. Leadership style of each individual manager tends to be either more demanding or empowering.

Demanding leadership style is often described as “alpha male” style. Highly intelligent, and successful, alpha males represent about 70% of all senior executives according to Harvard Business Review. They think fast, have unique analytical skills and insights, their high level of energy makes them comfortable with high workloads and stress. On the other hand, they tend to focus on flaws rather than praise achievements. They are inspiring but often by criticism triggering self-doubt and fear in most valuable team members.

Empowering leader chooses curiosity over being right. Instead of criticism offer his/her own ideas and opens to the contrary opinions. Empowering leadership incorporates more open communication, support, removing roadblocks and encouragement that builds fellowship and trust. It creates more mature and welcoming corporate culture and inspires to individual performance and commitment. Most employees thrive in such work environment, individuals are less prone to burnout and their organizational loyalty naturally goes up.

Employee well-being is now at the forefront of the corporate culture. Leaders need to lead with empathy, flexibility, and openness to what works best for each individual and team. Empowering leadership reinforces for employees that they are valued, and thus helps in a company’s effort to attract and retain people. Empowering leadership should be embraced by every modern leader.

Renata Dvorakova
Country Leader at Oracle