Enhance Success by Empowering Employees
Cathie Leimbach • September 23, 2020
Many leaders believe that employees don’t care about workplace culture or company results. They stifle success by ignoring strategies that would attract, retain, and empower quality people. At Leadercast 2019, Ginger Hardage , former Senior Vice President of Culture and Communications at Southwest Airlines, debunked several underlying limiting beliefs. She shared five aspects of creating a culture that empowers employees and drives organizational success.
Hardage encourages leaders to:
- Be intentional about building a healthy, uplifting culture.
- Ensure the organization has defined its core values and talk about them regularly. Include values discussions in job interviews and staff meetings.
- Ignore the naysayers who think this culture craze is all fluff. Join the parade of healthy culture, high performance companies that includes Chick-fil-A, Trader Joe’s, and Southwest Airlines.
- Develop, write down, and distribute policies and procedures that provide a framework for doing your organization’s work ethically, effectively, and efficiently. Equip your people to do the work and trust them to handle day-to-day variables within the framework.
- Strengthen culture by strengthening communication without waiting for a large line item in the budget. Have face time with your employees daily, involve them in decision-making, and share success stories.
Equip your employees by providing the right level of information and training, and they will help drive organizational success!
New tools promise big results. New software, dashboards, and systems all look great on paper. But months later, many leaders are still asking, “Why hasn’t much changed?” Because tools don’t change behavior — leadership does. A system can organize work, but it can’t create ownership. It can’t set expectations. It can’t follow through. Without strong leadership habits, even the best tools just make problems more visible. What really drives results? Clear expectations Consistent follow-through Helpful feedback Leaders who model the right behavior When those are missing, people work around the tool instead of with it. Adoption drops. Frustration rises. And the old problems stay. So the better question isn’t, “What tool do we need next?” It’s, “Do our leadership habits support the results we expect?” 👉 Join our 60-minute Leadership Conversation to explore the habits that actually drive performance.
When things feel “manageable,” leaders often continue with status quo. People are busy. Work gets done. But small issues quietly add up. Rework becomes normal. Deadlines stretch. Decisions take longer. None of it feels like a crisis, but together it eats away at time, energy, and profit. Inconsistent leadership makes it worse. When expectations change from day to day or from one manager to another, people stop giving their best. Some coast. Some get frustrated. Some start looking elsewhere. Turnover rises, along with hiring and training costs. The warning signs are usually right in front of us: Work keeps getting redone. Managers avoid tough conversations around poor performance. Good people are doing less than they could. Progress feels slower than it should. The real question isn’t, “Can we live with this?” It’s, “What is this costing us if nothing changes?” 👉 Join our 60-minute Leadership Conversation to explore how today’s patterns may be impacting your results — and what small shifts could make a big difference.