Wikipedia defines Empowerment as increasing the spiritual, political, social, educational, gender, or economic strength of individuals and communities.
Powerful stuff. Increasing the strength of individuals and communities.
The benefits of working with empowered people are so easy to see – people are energetic, engaged and take accountability for their actions and outcomes.
Management time is spent constructively, initially in setting the expectations and parameters. As the relationships build, its about harnessing ideas not rallying the troops, measuring results, giving feedback and celebrating successes.
People show initiative, talk about possibility and work together to deliver the results.
In stark contrast is the team of people where the manager acts as if it’s the industrial era heyday of ‘Command and Control’ style management. Tim Prosser states “The command and control management style works through extrinsic motivators such as threats, authority, and even monetary incentives, all of which prevent or even replace employees’ natural intrinsic motivation”.
Ultimately command and control is dominated by the premise that the managers know best, ironically many change leaders advocate strongly for avoiding command and control as a change leadership style as it destroys virtually any chance of success in 90% of transformational change efforts. Needless to say cultures that are dominated by managers who favour this style are slow moving and money focused. Not exactly the kind of culture featured in high performing organizations!
So if you really want to develop a positive culture, deliver change and results effectively, then it’s time to either educate or put the old generals out the back and let leaders who empower their teams lead the way – your employees and shareholders will thank you for it!
It really is that simple – set clear expectations, leave people alone to do what they do best, remove barriers, give feedback along the way and reward achievements. So the question is do you want to be someone who increases or decreases the strength of others?
“The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process” Barbara Coloroso.
