No Yelling - Employee Empowerment is More Effective than Intimidation

An informal survey of whether empowerment works better than intimidation showed 79% of the respondents favored empowerment. This is no surprise; professionals respond best to cordial and controlled interpersonal relationships in the workplace. It makes for an agreeable work environment. Remarkably, empowerment even in the face of failure can be a powerful positive motivator. Attrition can be cut in half as a minimum, and you keep your talent in place instead of losing it to the competition.

There is a need sometimes for firm and frank discussion especially when personal safety is the issue. There should be no compromise when it comes to compliance with safety rules. But, in general intimidation produces numerous counterproductive outcomes:

- It breeds resentment and sabotage; yelling is taken as a personal attack on character and it builds resentment and destructive motivations.

- It is an out-of-control reaction to something that can be dismissed with grace and corrective encouragement for future improved actions.

- It affects productivity and shuts down enthusiasm. Time is wasted with negative talk and healing of battle wounds.

- It can cause increases in sick time, union organization, and even harassment charges.

In addition, it can be a powerful demotivator, destroying personal ambitions of promotion in the organization. There is not much to recommend in the way of intimidation.

Planning and Deadlines - Empowerment works best in a planned, controlled environment. One method that has proven well over time is by using Microsoft Project. There are several options, but the Gantt Chart, which was originally used effectively during times of military conflict, makes sense in the industrial and commercial setting, too. Tasks are listed in a tabular form, and there is an associated timeline with optional name tags. Daily or weekly follow up makes the chart jump off the screen, and other related parties will be privy to it in an office computer network environment. Your team will see it, and your boss will see how it goes as often as he/she wants to view it. It could be a simple sequential chart or an interactive chart showing important time sensitive and sequence interactions. As often as you update it, the timeline will progress with accomplished tasks being highlighted.

Planning generally flows from the top down, and the employee can run his own project schedule from the cues received from the boss's master plan. Or the employee can add or expand on the master plan.

Wally Adamchik, the author of No Yelling, claims that treating people with respect and developing relationships based on trust goes a long way towards effective management. One marine senior officer even claims that "You have to love your people to a fault."