Every company has goals, and in order to succeed, employees need to support those goals. Therefore, if you want your employees to maximize their full potential, and to make the company’s goals their own, then you must give them a sense of autonomy. This is because studies prove that the highest motivation and satisfaction comes from choices we make for ourselves. Meaning that personal chosen goal brings a special type of motivation. Thus, when employees are inwardly motivated, they work with joy and find their tasks interesting. They feel more creative and persist more in the face of difficulty. Though true autonomy is very difficult especially in the workplace but the feeling of choice can be achieved more easily, so in this post, we explore some simple steps that managers can follow to give employees a sense of autonomy in the workplace.

Goals Value

First, as a manager, you must ensure your employees understand the goals assigned to them have value and why they should know. Many managers often fail in this aspect, they only tell their staffs what they need to do, without giving a proper explanation of the value of the goals or why it is important. Hardly will any person show real commits to a goal if they do not see why it’s essential for them to do it. Never, conclude with yourself that your team understands why a goal is essential like you do, without prior explanation from you.

Create Room for Staff Contributions

When the goal itself is predetermined by Management, giving your staffs the opportunity to decide how they will accomplish the goal would give them the feeling of choice required to be inwardly motivated. Giving them the opportunity to control the approach to their choice and abilities will also deepen their sense of control over the situation they find themselves in, which can only be of advantage to better performance.

Allow your Employees make Decisions

Finally, as managers, If you have to assign both the goals and the approaches for achieving such goals, endeavor to bring in the feeling of choice by permitting your staff to make decisions about more minor aspects of the task. For example, if your employees have to attend an employee development training to improve customer service, which the goals and approaches to accomplish them has been predetermined. You can allow your employees take turns deciding the topic areas the training will cover each week, better still you can even allow them to choose the kind of lunch to be ordered in the training. Research proves that these surface decisions gives employees the feeling of choice, even when the choices are not relevant to the goal itself.