The Secrets to Empowering Teams: Task Setting, Motivation, and Leadership

Empowered teams are critical to the success of your product. What are the key features of an empowered team?

“Never Tell People How to Do Things. Tell Them What to Do, and They Will Surprise You With Their Ingenuity.” - General Patton

Empowerment is everywhere. Empower this and empower that, and give your team freedom. Let them build their own thing; please do not interrupt, and close the door from outside.

Some of these points might be true, but as I usually say in my articles, let’s try to get to the fundamentals. I believe it is not possible to expand further without getting those right.

Task setting

It all starts with task setting. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, businesses have been constantly searching for ways to increase output per hour spent by their employees and, respectively, the amount of money they pay per hour.

During the Industrial Revolution and in Henry Ford’s factories, people had no choice about what they could do. They were skilled to a certain extent to perform repetitive operations, and there was always a plan to find someone else if they did not meet the quality, amount, or any other KPI that the organization defined.

There are some workplaces where these rules still apply, but most certainly not in the innovation. Innovation has yet to be built. Thus, you can’t train people. You do not even know what to train them for. So, humanity has decided to find a new way of setting the task.

Successful companies do not prescribe how they want the task completed; they are more interested in the result—either an upward trend in certain metrics or a specific business result. The way the team decides to achieve it usually sits with them, and while it might be influenced and confirmed by the body who created the initial task, it will most likely still be owned and adjusted by the team itself.

People in the industry are creative, able to find solutions without external help, and most likely enjoy the process of thinking and the joy of achievement—let them have all of it, and results will follow.

Motivation

It is astonishing how many people still think you can solve the problem with money. Yes, it is possible to gain short-term results by firefighting the flame with piles of cash, but this could be more sustainable in the long run.

At certain points, no matter how much money you pay people, they will not start working better or even doing worse. Moreover, you can even end up in a situation (quite luc, ky obviously, but unfortunate) that Nvidia encountered after their stock skyrocketed in 2023 - some of their engineers are not interested in doing their job anymore - they are so rich already that it is enough to fulfill their needs for the rest of their lives: https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-employees-rich-happy-problem-insiders-say-2023-12

The only way to motivate people - is by knowing your people and understanding why they are coming to work. Yes, some of them are coming just to pay for their kids' tuition fees, buy a bigger house, and then retire to do some gardening. However, the majority are doing their work because they find one or more elements of it satisfying - if you uncover what exactly and help them get even more satisfaction out of it - you get an instant strike - both you and your teammate happy.

This is an amazing video about motivation and one of my favorites of all time. It was created 14 years ago, and I highly recommend watching it to get more insights about motivation:

Leadership

Does your team need help? They certainly do. It can be anything—from the uncomfortable chairs in the office to the unstable environment to the external vendor who has missed their deadline for the third time in a row.

Did you spend time trying to understand these problems and how to solve them? If yes - you are on the right path. If not - try to do that immediately. While it is an excellent step to make sure your team trust you and believes that you are on their side no matter what happens - the only way to prove this leadership is to be in constant touch and, if cover is needed - fly on the mission and get stuff sorted.

Communication is vital, as there will be certain moments when you can’t sort certain things out. It happens. We live in a complex world. It is essential to provide all the necessary information in advance and even ask for advice—remember, they love solving problems and can propose or even implement a solution you have never thought about.

Are you empowered enough?

There will be a difference in understanding empowerment in different contexts and organizations. However, I believe that Task Setting, Motivation, and Leadership are three fundamental pillars—similar to Scrum’s Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation—that can make miracles when present, cause lots of trouble if any of them are missing, and help you solve the problem by even starting to pay closer attention to them.