Empowerment in Teams

In the last byte, we looked at how diversity and creativity influence the group settings. In today's byte, we talk about empowerment.

In order to ensure that teams manage themselves (self-manage) it would also be important to empower them. While team work builds the spirit of a team and helps the team members achieve more than they could individually do, if empowered it the right skills they could achieve more. Here are a list of four such skills that help empower the team members and there by the teams.

1. Competence Skills - these refer to the skills that deal with the strength - the mastery and experience in one's chosen discipline and profession. This is like the bed rock on which other skills and the team's performance could be built up.
2. Negotiation Skills - this helps the individual team members negotiate with their friends and foes on various aspects to be able to actively achieve what they intend.
3. Cooperative Skills - this deals with the individual’s ability to motivate his/her colleagues to work on increasing the gains for everyone in the team - this behavior is usually encouraging, helping etc to bring about the sought end.
4. Communications Skills - this is an essential skill that allows the team member to express self and also reflect and think. It is this expression that allows people to express and understand others.