In Scrum, management should always be a leader who empowers and supports their teams to succeed.
According to an article from Scrum Inc., companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their competition by 147% per share.1 As technological advancements and COVID evolves the new reality of work, we should consider building a working environment that satisfies the needs of our employees. By empowering our employees, we can build a work culture that has stronger job performance, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization.
Let’s take a look at 3 ways that you can use as a leader to empower your Scrum teams.
Encourage self-management and accountability
The reason why many leaders build self-managed teams is to develop quicker or more effective decision-making skills. By encouraging autonomy at work, employees learn to get the job done independently without leaders wasting their time on micromanagement.
Freedom at work is possible with autonomy, but this arrangement needs a distinct objective. The leader must make sure that goals are prioritised and clearly define the duties. It is also the leader’s role to recognize when to intervene and offer assistance.
To encourage self-management and autonomy, employees should be allowed to choose their own work environment, methods of operation, and timetables, but they should also be encouraged to promote accountability. They should take ownership of their work and commit to meeting their objectives.
According to Howell (2001), self-managed teams have the potential to be 15% to 20% more productive than other types of teams2.
Enhance team collaboration through work transparency
When teams are transparent, everyone knows who is working on what, where they are in the process, and how they are meeting deadlines. Teaching your employees the value of open communication enables managers to monitor employee growth and provide helpful criticism without micromanaging.
Encouraging collaboration and transparency at work require strategies that make teamwork efforts visible to everyone else in the organization. Employees are more likely to stay on task when everyone in your business is aware of which projects are moving forward within established timelines.
Utilize tools that encourage collaboration while accepting change. In order to realize your goal of a collaborative culture, exercise patience and regularly reaffirm your staff members. You will be more successful if you have a clear vision, clear expectations, and transparency that encourages collaborative behavior.
Prioritize people and interactions over processes
Any successful organization with empowered teams is all about building a team culture. Despite setting up elaborate workflows or procedures, issues, challenges, and problems will always arise. Having stringent processes will not protect us from encountering problems.
Similarly, we cannot force people to work hard by enclosing them in refined protocols. Focusing on what drives people is the only thing that can make a difference. People need guidance and direction. As leaders of a team, our responsibility is to avoid dictating to others. Instead of micromanaging, we must inspire. Being able to motivate employees and solve difficulties is one of the most important qualities that a leader must have.
In conclusion
To build a successful work culture with empowered employees, we must always remember that our employees are also our clients, and what matters most to them is their working experience. Engaged workers do better work. People stay with organizations and develop there when they feel comfortable and empowered. At the end of the day, every business will benefit from creating an employee experience that encourages productivity and prevents burnout.
Every organization wants its employees to increase their productivity. Often, it is up to the leaders and managers to create the right environment that cultivates a healthy work culture. As a result, we see more companies adopting the agile way of working to empower their teams. If you are interested in learning more about enabling hyper-productive teams to achieve twice the results in half the time, take a look at leading hyper-productive Scrum teams course.
References:
Team, S., 2022. Lessons for Leadership: How Employee Experience is Your Bottom Line. [online] Scrum Inc. Available at: https://www.scruminc.com/employee-experience-your-bottom-line/ [Accessed 25 July 2022].
How teams work. 2022. How teams work. [online] Available at: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-business/leadership-management/how-teams-work/content-section-1.3.2 [Accessed 25 July 2022].