As many organizations move towards teams as an essential element of their Total Quality initiatives, the role of the manager/supervisor becomes critical to supporting this new environ-ment. Ideally, managers and supervisors will evolve from the traditional style of plan, organize, direct and control (PODC) to a newer mode of lead, empower, assess and partner (LEAP). Employees will learn to team effectively while understanding increased levels of empowerment and new boundaries of responsibility. Organizations that have successfully implemented teams as a way of doing business have spent much time and effort preparing teams to make decisions previously reserved for managers. However, these organizations have also realized that empowerment must be introduced strategically, allowing teams to progressively assume new tasks, procedures and decision making as their abilities are developed. This session will explore aspects of LEAP management and employee empowerment in a teaming culture.

This workshop differs from our workshop entitled, "Initiating High Performance Teams," by its focus on supervisors and managers who are already "into" teams in their organizations and who need to understand effective behaviors in that new work structure. "Initiating." is aimed at the process of deciding between teams and work groups, the appropriate empowerment level for the team and the steps required to get teams off to a great start.

• Understand the various levels of empowerment and the relationships between capability and empowerment.
• Establish clear boundaries and parameters rather than ineffective delegation (or dumping).
• Know alternatives for handling team decisions with which they are uncomfortable.
• Develop empowering hand-off strategies for tasks and decisions.