INVESTING IN EMPOWERMENT
I recognize that empowering your team takes an enormous leap of faith. That’s what makes it so profoundly impactful when you do. Empowering is similar to delegating, but it is not entirely the same. You can delegate without empowering, but you can’t empower without delegating. Delegating shifts the responsibility for completing a task from one person to another person further away from the center of the web of command. By itself, it adds useful time for the person doing the delegating at the expense of time invested by the person to whom the task is given. It may, but does not have to require, any level of creativity, problem-solving skills, or judgment. Delegating confers responsibility, but not necessarily authority.
The teammates who are empowered, on the other hand, are given not only the responsibility to complete a task, but also the authority to apply the best of themselves to make decisions that ensure the best outcome. They should also have the authority, within the limits we as leaders define, to participate directly as problem solvers. This may include making decisions that are in the best general interest of the company, brand, project, or customer, even if they are not directly related to the teammates’ core responsibilities. Those decisions may result in our teammates personally acting to correct the effects of something that went wrong, referring problems to other teammates who are better qualified or more authorized to take remedial action, or simply conveying information through the web of command.
ESTABLISHING THE GUARDRAILS
Empowerment does not confer limitless authority. Defining and communicating clear boundaries and understandable guidelines for each teammate’s individual and shared responsibilities, as well as limits to the teammate’s authority, helps empower all teammates to better understand what is expected of them and what is their accountability to the company. Communicate what teammates can do to help solve problems and encourage them to reach out when it’s time to inform management of something that needs to be addressed.
At a minimum, all Super Bowl teammates were empowered and expected to relay to their supervisor or to the hotline anything they witnessed going wrong (a leak, flood, dangerous crowding, a security breach, an injury, etc.). It was everybody’s job, at the very least, to identify problems and quickly communicate issues that were beyond the limits of their authority or their ability to solve them directly.
Establish guardrails that define clear boundaries of teammate empowerment and share expectations during formal orientations, job training sessions, and in documentation that the teammates can reference. Key messages may include:
• Your assigned job is integral to our overall success. If you are not confident that you fully understand your job, please ask your supervisor for a thorough explanation.
• If you cannot fulfill your mission for any reason, or something interferes with your ability to get your job done, you must let your supervisor know as soon as possible.
• We are all members of a team that shares this purpose— ________________________. If you see something that will keep our team from fulfilling this important purpose, and you can correct it easily and quickly without endangering your mission, please do so. If you cannot correct it, you must let your supervisor know as soon as possible. If you cannot immediately reach your supervisor, use our hotline and we will send help.
• It is important to communicate the most accurate information available to our customers. If you do not have the answer to a question, please ask a teammate or your supervisor for help, or direct the customer to someone who can better help her.
• It is all of our jobs to respond when things go wrong or look like they may go wrong. If you see something, say something immediately. Provide your supervisor only with information you know is correct and do not embellish the details.
• You should never take any action that is illegal or dishonest.
• You should always contact your supervisor before:
• Taking any action that you know violates company policy.
• Taking any action that involves spending money or committing company funds.
• Taking any action that interferes with the mission of a fellow teammate.
• Taking any action that detracts from the enjoyment of others.
• It is everyone’s job to ensure we are providing a safe environment for our customers. Never do anything that endangers your safety or the safety of others.
• We are not authorized to speak to members of the media, even “off the record.” If you are approached by reporters or camerapersons, please refer them to our media relations department.
• Treat every customer as though they are a VVIP (Very, Very Important Person). And treat your fellow teammates the same way!
This illustration is most applicable as a guide to customer-facing teammates, but most of these points are just as appropriate for sharing more broadly with all other levels of supervision and management. Our expectations of everyone on our team is that they all participate as active members of the same early-warning system and they go out of their way to help solve problems and complaints, regardless of their job.
WHERE ANGELS DARE TO TREAD
It is often easier for us to trust the teammates over whom we have some level of management supervision, whether directly or through a third party that we have contracted. The strength and continuance of our business relationship requires them to be wholly accountable and cognizant that they will be judged on how they perform. How much do we trust our own colleagues within the organization—the teammates who we rely on, but over whom we have no direct supervisory relationship? Let’s be totally honest. We know from past experiences where the potential weak links walk about in our own hallways—the colleagues on the same or higher levels who we count on and we attempt to collaborate with, but who are difficult to manage or hold accountable. They may plan inadequately, miss important meetings, be imperfectly informed, communicate poorly, or simply not care as much as we do about the mission at hand. A failure by anyone on the team is a shared failure across the organization, and responsibility for that failure will land at the feet of whoever is at the lead.
If we perceive a vulnerability due to a colleague’s lack of engagement—either owing to similar past experiences or acutely from the red flags of unfulfilled deadlines, a lack of responsiveness, or general disinterest—we are still responsible to ensure they deliver what is required for our collective success. Here are some practices we can employ to manage reluctant colleagues:
• Overcommunicate. It is a good idea to distribute written minutes of important meetings to everyone, but don’t expect they will read them carefully. Schedule a briefing session on the phone or in person with colleagues who have missed an important meeting to relay essential information, updates, and revisions to the plan.
• Check In Often. Arrange a quick meeting, stop by, or call to ask, “How is everything going?” Doing so can be very effective and communicates your reliance on your colleagues’ contributions. Ask them where their greatest areas of concern lie, and how they might handle them if things go wrong.
• Offer Help. Ask how you and other members of the team can be helpful to their efforts. Get one or more secondary contacts for when a colleague is unavailable. Include the secondary contacts in meeting notices and on written communications.
• Keep Calm and Remain Vigilant. Although I am a great believer in letting experts do their jobs without interference, pay particularly close attention if you think a job isn’t being done. Check in more often as deadlines approach. Have your own Plan B on how you will handle problems stemming from any area where you perceive vulnerabilities.
There is one last point to make before we conclude the conversation about building an environment of empowerment and investing trust as leaders in our colleagues and teammates. It is exceedingly easy to undermine empowerment and obliterate trust. For me, all it takes is a lie. Just one. Personally, I cannot invest trust in anyone—colleague, superior, contractor, vendor, stakeh
older, or customer-facing teammate—who proves to be untruthful or deceitful. When something goes wrong, we must be 100 percent sure that our decisions are based on complete and reliable information. Fixing a problem is far more important that assigning blame, and we cannot effectively manage or respond to a problem if the information we have is based on a lie. I hold myself to the same standard. I will not lie to you when something goes wrong, or at any other time. That is how I will earn your trust. Lie to me and you’re dead. Simple.
EARNED TRUST
Investing trust in our teammates is only one-half of the equation. It is equally important to nurture the trust of the teammates we work with in us, starting with the most immediate level of our direct reports, and through them, to the rest of the organization. We must earn that trust from the first day we engage with our teammates, and on every day thereafter. We don’t earn that trust by proving how smart, capable, and talented we are. In part, we earn it by communicating our expectations, motivating teammates to meet or exceed them, and investing our trust in them. We also earn their trust by consistently, conscientiously, and honestly following through with our statements—doing what we say we will do.
By instituting and maintaining an environment of empowerment, we can transform a group of managers, supervisors, line staff, and contractors into a team focused on achieving individual and shared goals. As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to demonstrate daily our belief in the importance of every individual’s contribution as a member of our community of problem solvers who are on the lookout to keep things going right. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by leveling the playing field by modeling the standards and behaviors we want our teammates across the organization to emulate.
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LEADING A COMMUNITY OF PROBLEM SOLVERS
It was the day of our first “Fans First” rally, an orientation, training, and rah-rah session for 7,000 of our front-line security, customer service, and volunteer hosts from the community. Under the leadership of sports event veteran Allison Melangton, and Mark Miles, former CEO of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee had already established an inspiring volunteer program, which was representative of the warmth of “Hoosier hospitality.” But it was anything but warm that day. It was well below freezing, with a steady breeze dropping wind chills to uncomfortably numbing levels. Nevertheless, our event operations team agreed that it was important for us to brave the cold outside Lucas Oil Stadium, to greet our arriving staff members in exactly the fashion we wanted them to present to our fans on event day. We wanted them to experience for themselves how a sincere-and-friendly greeting in the Midwest cold could add a touch of warmth to someone’s day.
Most seemed to be excited as they arrived for the rally at the stadium. This was the day they would become Super Bowl “teammates.” With their heads turtled into their coats and scarfs, some were more focused on seeking relief inside from the cold. One woman, as I greeted her, speed-walked past, uttering a mild oath, and added: “It is not a good morning. I had to park five blocks away, and I am freezing to death.” I did feel bad for her. It was bitter cold outside and she appeared not to be dressed for the walk. “I’m sorry about that, ma’am. Run on in. It is definitely warmer inside,” I said as she shuffled past without a pause.
About two hours later, we were wrapping up the rally after a medley of entertainment, speeches by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay and several players, and a customer-service presentation delivered by experts from The Disney Institute. My own on-stage contribution included an orientation to the 10-day schedule of events and a peek at how the downtown area around the stadium would be impacted leading up to the game. Our event management team that had surrounded the perimeter of the stadium were now positioned at the exits to distribute a special commemorative “Super Bowl Teammate” pin. The only way you could earn one was to have attended and stayed to the end of the voluntary rally. Everyone who earned one wore it throughout the Super Bowl, and those who didn’t attend the rally wish they had shown up just to get one. A woman sought me out as I handed out pins to our exiting teammates.
VOLUNTEER: “It figures. I would have been the biggest jerk to the guy in charge of the whole thing. I’m really very sorry.”
FRANK: “That’s okay. Remember, you never know who you are talking to. I might have been somebody important, or I might have been nobody at all. But we have to treat everyone as though they were a VIP.”
She accepted the pin with a handshake and a smile. That was the message we tried to impart to everyone. Treat everyone the same because they are all fans and we should assume they are all VIPs. We couldn’t have communicated that lesson as effectively had we not vividly modeled the behavior that we desired our teammates would emulate.
MODELING BEHAVIORS
Influencing the actions of others by modeling behaviors is apparent to anyone who has ever watched the long-running children’s program in TV history. Sesame Street teaches youngsters the values of friendship, kindness, honesty, and learning, among other values, by modeling socially desired behaviors observed in adorable, childlike puppet characters. No one on my team, including me, was as warm, fuzzy, or charming as a Muppet, but I believe that modeling the behaviors we wanted our teammates to present to our customers, our fans, contributed significantly to better service and a stronger, empowered team concentrated on keeping things going right. To ensure that our team focused on the experience of our fans, our leaders, managers, and supervisors needed to be attentive to the experience of our teammates. How we treated them, we believed, would have a direct bearing on how they treated our guests. It would also have a direct impact on engaging them enough to share our interest in running a smooth event, especially when they saw something going wrong.
The large “Fans First” rallies were the last in a series of training sessions designed to transform our philosophy into a more engaged, problem-solving culture. We first staged a more immersive and interactive training session for our core leadership team of approximately 50 key event operations staff and contractors. Their feedback and buy-in helped to inform the content for the next gathering held one month later, where they were joined by the 300 additional teammates that they managed directly. By the time of the final “Fans First” rally for 7,000 teammates, the leadership and management groups who had been empowered to help develop the rally were already engaged and invested, and modeling what we were trying to establish—a working environment in which everyone was focused on shared success and on guard against contributing factors to failure.
We wanted to model a collaborative, communicative, and accountable culture. One way we conveyed this was with the use of first-name-and-hometown name tags. I’ll be honest. The original reason we included the teammate’s choice of hometown was to avoid having visiting fans ask someone from New York for restaurant recommendations in Indianapolis. What it did, however, was break the ice between teammates who first met in a restaurant, hotel elevator, at the stadium, or on the street. Once someone noticed a fellow teammate’s hometown and shared that she “had an aunt in San Antonio,” what usually followed was “what job do you have at the Super Bowl?” Thus, an usher could initiate a conversation with a television producer, and a team services liaison became the acquaintance of a greeter. Our name tags leveled the playing field, freely opening communication and reinforcing the concept of a team of collegial equals. Everyone, after all, no matter their position, had a first name and a town they call home.
CREATING A COMMUNITY OF TEAMMATES
Introducing universally accessible pathways of communication helped everyone to feel informed, and as a result, be more engaged. Now that all teammates could report problems, it was more likely they would feel empowered and encouraged to do so. But while we had taken steps toward creating a team, we had not yet developed a community. That’s where a platform called “Yammer.com” came in. Yammer was a private social media platform that had a universally familiar and easy-to-n
avigate feel like Facebook, but it was only available to a closed loop of participants invited by the Super Bowl management team.
Every teammate with a Super Bowl working credential received an invitation—from top-level NFL executives to contracted security guards. Once registered, teammates would be kept updated on the latest Super Bowl news, behind-the-scenes fun facts, traffic information, and last-minute changes. Teammates, for their part, could ask questions and post requests for guidance. “I am working for security but haven’t received any information on when my first shift starts,” notified one user. We were on the lookout for these posts around the clock and would either answer their questions directly or contact the teammates’ supervisor to respond. We made sure that the supervisors responded.
Our ability to communicate with the entire database of teammates to inform and engage them more deeply was enormously powerful. Our continuous monitoring of the site enabled us to respond rapidly to posted questions and expressed uncertainties, avoiding problems rooted in a lapse in communication or miscommunication. The Yammer.com app was the perfect place to focus teammates and respond to requests for help. Our posts of exclusive, behind-the-scenes insights made everyone feel like insiders. But what really created a vibrant, active, and engaged community was the app’s user-friendly functionality, which encouraged teammates to tell their stories and post photos of the venues, events, players, and celebrities they encountered when they were off-duty. It built a palpable groundswell of contagious excitement. Like many social media platforms, strangers became acquaintances and acquaintances became friends. In New Orleans, teammates even shared gumbo recipes, a thread that one senior NFL executive in New York signaled a failure of the initiative because it had nothing to do with the league or the event. True, but it had everything to do with community, one that felt engaged enough to transform their membership in our team into a social and cultural experience and establish “personal” relationships across the project. Through that membership, we created a team committed to making things go right and poised to respond to things that could go wrong.
What to Do When Things Go Wrong Page 15