New Book The Empowerment Project Urges Businesses to Put Trust in Employees
Author and business leader Chad Peterman explains how the simple act of empowering employees can lead to greater business success in his new book The Empowerment Project: Grow Your People, Grow Your Business.
“To empower employees, a company needs a positive, supportive culture, and that kind of culture doesn’t just happen,” Peterman writes. “Many companies think it simply comes from a leader’s personality – they don’t see it as something that needs to be developed. A great corporate culture comes from an intentional internal process, the result of many efforts within a company, and those efforts are never finished.”
The Empowerment Project, published by Advantage Books, discusses such topics as hiring people who are smarter than you, handling trust issues, building a workforce, relying on outside sources, and managing dreams.
“An essential way to empower employees is to get them involved in decision-making,” Peterman says. “If the leader of a business is the only person making decisions, that company is going to have a very slow growth trajectory because of the time it takes for that one person to address every issue. The pace of operations can slow to a snail’s pace and frustrate employees who need to move quickly.”
In his book, Peterman also discusses roadblocks to empowerment – such as fear of failure and inadequate communication – that business leaders often put in their employees’ way without even realizing it.
In The Empowerment Project, Peterman draws on lessons from his own company, Peterman Brothers, a heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and electrical business originally started by his father in the 1980s. Peterman recalls how his father empowered him when he first went to work for him more than a decade ago.
“If a leader is fortunate enough to find great people and add them to their team, trust and empowerment must be there, or they won’t get much done,” Peterman writes. “I’m comfortable knowing what I’m good at and what I’m not, and for the things I’m not good at, I find great people who are, and I trust them to do their thing.”
Chad Peterman (www.chadpeterman.com), author of The Empowerment Project: Grow Your People, Grow Your Business, is the President and CEO of Peterman Brothers, a heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and electrical company in Indiana. In 1986, Peterman’s father started Peterman Heating, Cooling & Plumbing. When Chad Peterman joined his father in 2011, the business had grown from a one-man operation to 21 employees and annual revenues of around $4 million. Today, Peterman Brothers has 550 employees across eight locations and expected revenues of $140 million in 20024. Peterman also hosts a podcast, “Can’t Stop the Growth.”
