A productive workforce will carry your business into the future. It is all a matter of asking the right questions to enable your employees to make positive change.
If you would like greater productivity in the workplace, you need to surround yourself with employees who want to be the leaders of a greater future. They need to look beyond creating simply for tomorrow.
Today’s workforce is empowered, restless, creative and clever. Workers do not want to be dictated to, and if you empower them to create their own job they will deliver way beyond what anyone else might think possible. If you are a savvy business leader, you will recognise this and use it to your advantage.
“As a leader, you want to empower people not to wait but to make choices.”
There are three key elements to being a leader in the productive workforce of the future:
- Ask questions
Empowerment is never about having the answer, it’s about the questions. If you want to be a true leader, this should be your starting point: “What question can I ask that will allow everything and everyone to grow?”
When such a question is asked of someone, they need to delve more into what they know in order to create beyond what they previously thought possible. This is how you create a greater future, by cultivating a workplace based on questions.
At one point at Access Consciousness, our representatives told us they did not want to lead the first day of the five-day program we had created for them to work from. So we asked what we could change. Now the first day has become a course called Access Bars. From this one small change, our representatives are more motivated and enthusiastic about the program, and because of this the program has grown exponentially.
- Never wait, always create
Many businesses have slow decision-making processes with approval needed from multiple parties before anything happens. This is not conducive to a productive workplace. As a leader, you want to empower people not to wait but to make choices.
Choice creates awareness, and while not every choice is going to create what you would like it to, it will allow people to act and perhaps fail. They will tend to never want to choose failure again, and will look for how they can make a greater contribution moving ahead.
I will let my staff members fail, and have seen the positivity created when they gain awareness of the results of their choice. Choice is a constant state of movement, and with the pace of the modern workplace you need to be constantly choosing and moving to be ahead of the cutting edge of business.
- Listen
The people you work with have the information about what is working or not working in your business. A productive workplace has a feedback system that lets employees identify, change and choose options that can create a greater future. A leader will listen to the people they work with, and seek the information they need to make positive change.
Remember that your employees are the people who know your business intimately, and have vital and valuable information that can help your business grow.
Above all, effective modern leadership is about empowerment. Empower your employees to speak up. Empower them to contribute ideas. And, vitally, empower them to be honest about what it is they want and what they would like their life and their career to look like. Then allow them to choose it.
Gary Douglas, Founder, Access Consciousness
