Allow me to illustrate; say that you have a safety specialist who is not up to par and is not respected by you or others at their work. Everyone says he/she is not any good and you are even considering letting him or her go…Wait, before you pull the trigger and end his/her career with your company, ask yourself, "Have they been empowered". Many are authorized but the successful ones are empowered. You ask "What's the difference?", to be empowered, someone else needs to trust you and lift you up:
1. Begin with full trust and confidence in their motivation, competence and qualifications.
2. Visibly support and be loyal to their efforts.
3. Unambiguously layout your expectations with a "real" offer of support accompanied with training materials and funds.
4. Working from a position of trust you will see many more attributes of the person that are encouraging and with the continuous reinforcement of the positive, you will see results manifest as wins, capitalize on the wins while shoring up the low points with constructive tutoring.
You ask, "What if they fail, wasn't my trust misplaced?" I say that it was not, because you still balance out in the end with knowledge of what you need and if required you can better select the next person. In addition, you can look in the mirror and say to the face looking back at you, that you did all you could to empower them to be a success they just didn't harness it. In a win scenario, you will see the average person raise their own standards and meet the expectations or at least progress towards it. Remember when you start with trust, you will have more people you trust in the end
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