CEO = Chief Empowerment Officer
When you see or hear 'CEO', you obviously associate it with 'Chief Executive Officer'. I have a completely different spin on what CEO means! For me, it represents 'Chief Empowerment Officer'. Being a leader of an organization, one of the core responsibilities of the CEO is to empower the team.
What is the meaning of 'empowerment' to me? The act of empowerment is to enable others to be the best and authentic version of themselves. Once the individual is being their best self, then he/she can be an instrument to deliver excellence and success for the organization.
As a CEO, he/she would need to set up several principles within the organization.
- Understand the intrinsic motivations of the team member. For intrinsic ones, they want to be motivated by doing a task that aligns their best skills or that provides the most impacts on their stakeholders. A great CEO will support these intrinsic motivations so that the team member feels empowered.
- Assign projects or tasks with noble vision and success criteria. By sharing the 'why' of the work, the team member will feel much more inspired by the noble intent. The success criteria will guide the team member in knowing how to be successful, and thus feeling empowered. As the team member work on the project or task, the CEO should always reinforce to the team member that their work is valuable and that they are supported with anything they need (e.g. resources, processes, etc).
- Create an environment that inspires the team. The environment influences the subconscious mind of the team member. Therefore, consider having bright natural light (to get vitamin D), quotes from great leaders, uncluttered and clean spaces, fun (e.g. games corner) or quiet spaces (e.g. to meditate or think of new ideas) and more for this environment to be inspirational. As well, since we are working remotely, encourage the team member to take the time to create an inspirational space for themselves.
Once these principles are applied by the CEO, their team will flourish to new heights and provide positive results. However, a true CEO also keeps in mind that we are all human, and we will all have several 'low' days where we don't feel empowered by our work or make mistakes. In these cases, the CEO will create a space with compassion to allow the team member to overcome their low days or provide alternative tools to re-empower the team member.
In summary, the genuine CEO would focus on the empowerment of their team in order to execute with excellence for the organization.