Empowerment

Empowerment

Yes, this is another one of those words that has been pretty thoroughly lampooned in the pages of Dilbert comics, however it truly is a powerful concept of leadership.

In Leading at a Higher Level, empowerment is defined as "The creation of an organizational climate that releases the knowledge, experience and motivation that resides in people."

This sounds good right? And it makes sense, because if you try to lead by just telling people exactly what to do what do you think they will do? Obviously they will only do exactly as they are told, because you have disempowered them, treated them as if they were merely an automaton (see Genius with a Thousand Helpers).

However, when you treat your team members to demonstrate self leadership you get something totally different. They own their part of the vision. In a school environment, they will ask "What do I want to learn?" instead of "What are they going to teach me?". In a work environment they will ask "What do I need to do to make my company successful?" instead of "What does my boss want me to do?"

Creating an empowered team is a one of the goals that every leader should aspire to, and Leading at a Higher Level gives 3 keys in order to do so.

1. Share Information with Everyone - How many of you have been on a team where the "leader" kept all of the information to himself/herself? This "leader" would then make all of the decisions without consulting the rest of the team, with the excuse that "You guys don't have all the information that I do, so you wouldn't understand," when these decisions were undoubtedly unpopular. What did having this type of leader to do team morale? It hurt morale.
   Exactly the converse is also true. Full disclosure of relevant information helps team members understand decisions, and possibly help determine the best options to choose. Furthermore, this feeling of ownership does wonders for morale.
   
2. Create autonomy through boundaries - What is the old saying... "Good fences to good neighbors make" Not exactly the same idea, but when you define what your team member's responsibilities are it helps prevent the awkward "I thought it was his job..." conversations after a mishap. These boundaries give people a sense of "This is mine, so I ought to take care of it". An important sidenote is that these boundaries are should NOT be exclusive. Just because something is not within your scope of responsibilities does not mean you cannot do it, and conversely it doesn't mean that someone else should not be allowed to help you with it.
   
3. Replace the old hierarchy with self directed individuals and teams - This one is more long term. But if you can build your organization to be flatter, with more people being on an "equal" rank, obviously we can sidestep the paralysis of only doing "What my boss tells me to do" or even worse having to deal with different layers of management having differing ideas of you you have to do.
   

Hopefully "empowerment" is no longer a dirty word, and as always comments or questions are requested and appreciated.

-Jason