Working With The Managers At SFWMD

I've really enjoyed working with the people here at the SFWMD in West Palm Beach.  They have rewarded me with the utmost trust which has motivated me to new heights.  I have found them to be engaged and eager to learn.

I have learned from them and I'd like to share with you some of their words about empowering others and about level four in general.
 

The Albers' Epiphany


 
The key to making values work is to develop your personal value statement and hold yourself accountable
An excellent book to read is "Walk The Talk: And Get The Results You Want" by Eric L. Harvey and Alexander D. Lucia.   Two noteable quotes from this book are:
"Words to live by are just words, unless you live by them.  You have to walk the talk."
"We judge ourselves mostly by our intentions, but others judge us mostly by our actions."
 
 

Empowerment Means:

Providing employees with the information, guidance, encouragement and tools to make decisions and perform tasks at the level at which this can be most effectively done.

Empowerment @ SFWMD:

Create a place that allows employees to grow, lead, and succeed by providing a climate of mutual respect, trust, and supportiveness at all levels of the organization to achieve the shared vision.
 

Specific things we can do to make empowerment happen:
Share knowledge and information with employees and encourage employees to share information with each other.
Expect and encourage individual growth.
Provide support to increasing system knowledge and personal growth by promoting a climate of respect, trust and supportiveness through teamwork and EMD activities.
One Acronym for Empowerment might be:
Extending, enabling, equitable
Mutual respect
Participation
Openness
Willingness and Wide availability of information
Encouraging
Resource availability
Mentoring
Education
Non threatening climate
Trust
Definition of Empowerment:

Empowerment means providing employees with a clear mission, the appropriate resources, the authority to make well informed decisions and the climate for achieving the mission by trusting and valuing each individual, their knowledge, and abilities to grow, improve, and become responsible employees.

To achieve empowerment we support the following:

CPM training for senior managers.
Continually evaluate the organizational structure and policies (use teams and support learning from mistakes as opposed to punishing for them).
Create a safe environment for taking risk and assuming responsibilities.
Cultivating a trustful and trustworthy atmosphere.
Create a performance evaluation system that matches the new culture, i.e. teams - 360 evaluations.
 

Here is the link to SFWMD web page:

http://sfwmd.gov/
 

I sincerely thank these people for helping me with my professional growth and development.

Just a note to the managers at SFWMD:
Please take the time as you do your work to submit your work to the Davis Award Panel.  You can find a nomination form on the web page:   http://www.floridataxwatch.org/

Don't Forget to visit CPM Web Page for the schedule:   http://www.fsu.edu/~cpm/