Challenge
When employees say, “I don’t have the freedom to work in the way that will make me as successful as possible,” it reveals a misalignment between expectations and support.
This kind of feedback suggests that employees feel constrained by rigid workflows, micromanagement, or systems that don’t allow for individual creativity and preferences. When people lack autonomy, they often feel disconnected from their work, which impacts motivation, innovation, and performance.
The issue is not usually a lack of accountability. Most people want to succeed. The real issue is that they don’t feel trusted or empowered to do their best work in a way that aligns with their strengths.
Solution
Empowering employees to work in the way that suits them best begins with trust, flexibility, and clarity. It also requires a thoughtful understanding of each person’s working style and the team’s overall dynamic.
Here are three effective strategies:
- Design Flexibility With Intention: True autonomy doesn’t mean total freedom without structure. It means giving people room to choose how they approach their work within clear goals and shared expectations. Use behavioral insights and team profiling tools to understand when and how individuals work best.
- Shift from Control to Clarity: Replace micromanagement with clarity on outcomes, priorities, and deadlines. When employees know what success looks like and are trusted to reach it in their own way, they are more likely to take ownership and deliver high-quality results.
- Empower Decision-Making at the Individual Level: Allow team members to make decisions about their schedules, tools, workflows, and environments whenever possible. Providing this level of trust builds confidence and reinforces personal accountability.
Actions
To give your team the freedom they need to thrive, here are some steps you can take right away:
- Use Behavioral Insights and Hybrid Work Profiles: Visit our C3 Tools page to explore tools that help identify individual work styles, chronotypes, and collaboration needs. This insight allows you to tailor autonomy in ways that make sense for each team member.
- Redefine Success Through Outcomes: Focus less on how people work and more on what they deliver. Set clear objectives, agree on priorities, and let your team take ownership of how they get there. This shift allows for autonomy while keeping accountability strong.
- Create Room for Adaptability: Build in flexibility where it matters most, whether through remote work options, asynchronous communication, or flexible hours. Make sure this flexibility is based on what helps people be most successful, not just what’s most convenient.
- Apply the SOAR C3 Team Meetings Framework: Use the SOAR C3 Team Meetings Framework to check in regularly on how autonomy is working for each team member. Make space for discussions about what’s helping or hindering individual success and make adjustments accordingly.
- Celebrate Self-Directed Wins: Recognize when employees take initiative and succeed on their terms. Highlight stories of autonomy leading to great outcomes. This reinforces the value of freedom within structure and builds a stronger culture of trust.
Conclusion
When employees are trusted to work in the way that suits them best, they show up with more energy, creativity, and ownership. The freedom to design how they work is not about doing less. It is about unlocking more of what makes each person thrive.
This approach reflects the essence of our C3 Framework, which helps organizations create compassionate, cohesive, and collaborative environments where autonomy and accountability go hand in hand.
Explore our C3 Tools to learn how you can empower your team and help each person reach their definition of success.
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