John Tschohl, Founder and President of the Service Quality Institute, says, “Without empowerment, an organization will never be a service leader. Empowerment is the most critical skill an employee can master and a company can drive in order to lure and keep customers.” That statement from one of the country’s leading thinkers on quality is strong and unequivocal. But just how does a company or organization “drive” employee empowerment.
The answer is simple and just as unequivocal - Service-Based Leadership.
Without effective Service-Based Leadership, not just at the top of the organization, but at all the intervening ranks down to, and most importantly, front line supervisors, the necessary relationships will never be formed with line employees. Here are some quotes that make the point.
“People who are unable to build solid, lasting relationships will soon discover that they are unable to sustain long, effective leadership.”
John C. Maxwell
Developing the Leader Within You
“With Service-Based Leadership, the attitude and primary motivation of the leader is service to others - to members, to employees, to shareholders. This approach to leadership naturally creates relationships - the deep and abiding bonds that sustain the efforts of the company.”
“This leadership style differs from others in its focus on serving the needs of employees to provide them with the proper tools, training, resources, motivation, and empowerment to serve the club’s members.”
The Quest for Remarkable Service
“How can employees provide quality service if they are not properly served by the leadership and example of their managers?”
The Quest for Remarkable Service
“As a group of people committed to common goals, you can only achieve your team’s greatest potential by taking advantage of the talent, initiative, and ingenuity of each and every one of your employees. To the extent that any individual is not valued, trained, and motivated, your enterprise suffers.”
Leadership on the Line
“For employees to feel empowered, you have to create a culture that nourishes and sustains it. By conscientiously and sincerely working to become the best Service-Based Leader you can be . . . you will create an environment where employees will recognize their empowerment and enthusiastically act on it in all they do.”
Employee Empowerment
“[None of the ways to kill empowerment] are caused by employees. If your employees do not feel empowered, look no further than your leadership and the way you interact with your people.”
Employee Empowerment
Summary: Since employee empowerment ultimately depends only on “the recognition by employees that they are empowered,” empowerment is a direct result of an organization’s systematic development and institutionalization of Service-Based Leadership.
Thanks and have a great day!
Ed Rehkopf
This weekly blog comments on and discusses the club industry and its challenges. From time to time, we will feature guest bloggers - those managers and industry experts who have something of interest to say to all of us. We also welcome feedback and comment upon the blog, hoping that it will become a useful sounding board for what’s on the minds of hardworking club managers throughout the country and around the world.
Club Resources International - where membership and all resources are FREE!
In many clubs the assumption is that if you hire good people as golf professionals, food and beverage managers, controllers, activity directors, golf course superintendents, membership directors, etc., they don’t need to be trained because they know what they’re doing. While this may be true of the job skills for their particular position, there is far more a manager must know and ignoring this fact can be dangerous to your operation.
With so much to teach each new employee, do you have a training strategy beyond osmosis? Have you ever fleshed out a curriculum for each service position? Is your training material written down for consistency and formatted for brevity and clarity? Do you test your employees on training materials? Do you offer follow-up or refresher training? Do you track the training that each employee gets to make sure everyone is trained to the same standard? Do you encourage feedback from employees regarding the adequacy of training? Do you periodically review and revise training materials?