I can’t count the number of times clients have lamented to me that their employees aren’t taking initiative or thinking for themselves. Yet when I dig deeper, the culprit is almost always the same: our own practices, processes and policies. When rules are so detailed that people fear doing anything “wrong”, initiative naturally withers.
Contrast that with my recent experience at the Imperial Hotel Gold Coast Australia. Last week I spoke at a 2 day conference followed by a day of back to back virtual meetings. Due to circumstances I won’t bore you with I ended up having to change hotels for the third night. As happens so often, I had to check out of the first hotel before I could check into the second. Normally I would have had to find a quiet spot in the lobby or restaurant to do a series of 6 back to back meetings. This was impossible though because it was during school holidays and – well you get the picture.
I asked Sarah, the Front Office Manager if there was a quiet place I could go and without hesitation she unlocked this beautiful banquet room for me for the day.
You could tell by the look on the Concierge and Bar Manager’s faces that this was CLEARLY against policy.
But she did it anyway and made me into a raving fan!
Empowering employees isn’t about throwing out all boundaries; it’s about training your people and then trusting them to do what’s right. Customer‑service expert Shep Hyken notes that empowered employees “are trained well and then given per mission to do what’s right for both the customer and the company”. In his view, it should take one person to say “yes” and two to say “no”—an inversion of the usual approval process that sends a powerful message: we trust you.
If you want initiative, give your people the autonomy and support to exercise their judgment. Strip away the unnecessary rules, set clear values, and back your team when they act in good faith. The result will be employees who feel empowered and customers who become loyal fans.
