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Organizational EmpowermentCondensed from Wikipedia by Don Morgan, Ph.D. Organizations tackle the uncertainties of today's changing world by drawing out the creative potential of the people who are the organization. Empowerment means creating an environment where people are equipped and encouraged to make decisions in autonomous ways and to feel that they are in control of the outcomes for which they are responsible. It means opening the door for dissent, avoiding groupthink and encouraging innovation. To understand some of the complexities of Organizational Empowerment, we will be looking at it from the perspectives of leaders, employees, and organizations. Empowerment involves distributing authority throughout the organization. The leader’s perspective is where it all starts. What does empowerment mean for the CEO and management? Empowerment from the Leader’s Perspective Empowering leaders behave in an empowering manner by (1) influencing through context, (2) creating a culture of inclusion, (3) giving and not taking back control, (4) providing moral and logistical support, (5) communicating a clear mandate, and (6) equipping people for success. Influence through context implies trust in a higher principle or guiding force and belief in the creative potential of human nature. It is a mater of trusting the process. It is not "giving power," but creating a context where empowerment is released and nurtured. Leaders define the context and standards at every level by giving people freedom to act and innovate, thereby developing leadership and producing proactive employees, giving them a competitive edge. Create a feeling of inclusion to nurture and empower. Develop an atmosphere of inclusion across all levels, making sure that everyone has a voice and that their voices are heard. Leaders welcome dissent as a source of objectivity and innovation. New ideas must be allowed in the decision-making processes to generate solutions superior to those achieved through the exercise of positional power. Give up control and do not reclaim it. Expect to go through a phase where managers are faced with ambiguities and a sense that things are out of control. During this uncomfortable phase, one is tempted to tighten the controls. Resist the temptation to tighten control if you want your people to use a proactive approach to problem-solving. Once responsibility is given, do not try to take it back. Support employee empowerment. Support of superiors is critical. Fear of reprimand or sanctions—because a decision didn't work out—will kill efforts to empower. This is not delegating. Delegating is assigning a task to someone. Empowerment is giving responsibility and the freedom to choose the means of accomplishment. It means the leader moves from "boss" to "coach." However, the objective must be clearly understood. Cesar Guajardo, General Director of Praxair in Mexico, wrote: I gave people the responsibility and authority to do what they needed to improve performance. I asked them to share large-scale decisions with me. Otherwise, I gave them the authority to make decisions on their own. I encouraged small committees to share ideas and get points of view. I let them learn on their own by making mistakes. At times, I had to support ideas that were not very good at the beginning, but worked just fine. (Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick & Kerr, 2002, p. 32) Articulate the common purpose. Do not mistake empowerment for an absence of direction. The leader needs to create the vision and clarify goals. A lack of clarity about desired outcomes and role expectations is disempowering. Being accountable for specific expectations is better than not knowing where you stand. It is critical for the leader to clearly define the common purpose, goals, and limitations. If not, employees will be hesitant. Pass the ball and let the associate run with it—but run within the ball field. Stay inbounds. Responsibility for and commitment to a clearly articulated mission is essential. Equip people for success to insure a good chance of success. This involves training, resources, and information. Too often employees are given responsibility for which they are not equipped. This entrapment brings the feeling of being set up. Consider setting up an unallocated resource pool for solving unforeseen problems. Leaders provide their people with all the information they need by making information readily available to people at all levels through more channels. Empowerment from the Employee’s Perspective To experience empowerment, employees need to develop skills in and practice: (1) open communication, (2) work in teams, (3) critical listening, (4) tolerance of uncertainty, (5) resilience and courage, and (6) accepting responsibility. Open communication is a willingness to put our thoughts on the table; to be exposed to scrutiny; to own up to one’s ideas, assumptions, biases and fears; and help others to do the same. Corporate cultures that promote creativity are characterized by direct interaction and openness—a climate where ideas are owned and challenged through honest dialogue. It may not be comfortable but it is a necessary condition of empowerment. Such openness cannot be coerced. Willingness and know-how for working in teams is essential. It is not just self-empowerment. It is a collective change that comes by learning respect for the contributions of others. Empowerment is not a Win-Lose paradigm where an increase in the power of one results in a decrease in the power of others. In MMC’s Team-Building course, participants learn to value the uniqueness of the other players. By discovering and emphasizing the gifts of each individual, the experience of empowerment increases for everyone on the team. Gain wisdom to be fully empowered. To move from dependence on superiors for decisions, one must move beyond data, information, and knowledge to make appropriate decisions. Data is a collection of categorized numbers. Information is the meaning extracted from data. Knowledge consists of sets of information put in context, and wisdom is merging knowledge with universal principles for application to real-life situations. This requires a higher level of involvement than the old scientific management paradigm that treated employees like machines. In empowered organizations, employees across the board are committed to thinking and acting for success of the organization, as does top management, but more effectively. Wisdom is the result of thinking about the future, recognizing trends and anticipating events or outcomes that may affect the organization and from interactions with customers, suppliers, and others with whom employees interface directly. Tolerate uncertainty. Empowerment can be threatening. Expect some employees to resist empowerment. This is especially true when not only the outcomes, but the means and ways have always been clearly defined for them by others. Decisions about how to get things done, when left to the employee, is disquieting for the leader. This uncertainty is a change from working in an established routine where employees adhere to the rules and procedures. Under pressure, employees tend to run to the leader seeking resolution and closure. Leaders who do not understand the dynamics of empowerment, out of misdirected compassion or because it makes them feel more powerful, often succumb to these requests by telling them what to do. This is disempowering and reestablishes dependence. If employees are encouraged to think for themselves, goals and boundaries need to be clearly defined. This establishes guidelines for use of intuition and thinking across departments and disciplines for solutions related to their common purpose. Resilience and courage come from within. The source of confidence is not in others but in one’s own inner strength. Empowerment means to be forward thinking enough to live with mistakes and failures without being impaired. Those living with self-doubt will be unlikely to accept the challenge of empowerment because, for them, more responsibility means more chance of failure, and failure threatens their sense of self-worth. Empowerment is very personal. Acceptance of higher levels of responsibility is inherent in an empowering context. Accept responsibility for outcomes. Empowerment goes beyond delegation, and encompasses the burden of responsibility. Empowerment must be balanced by responsibility. They cannot blame upper management, suppliers, other department heads, or anyone else for failure to produce desired results. This enables them to learn from their mistakes. Empowered employees are willing to have their performance measured by objective written assessments because these are opportunities for feedback and improvement. Part of responsibility happens when you see inappropriate management conduct or receive inappropriate direction. It is important to document all incidents and save them in a safe place. Empowerment from the Organization’s Perspective Empowerment calls for organizations to (1) be more decentralized, (2) to share more information, (3) to have in place a system of contingent rewards, (4) to be team-based, and (5) to align itself with its goals and values. Decentralization distributes decision-making as close to the action as appropriate. This means giving employees the authority to make timely decisions. Individual empowerment cannot occur within a highly centralized system of control because such systems reserve decision-making power for the few who occupy the center, thus inhibiting individual initiative. People are not motivated to change when they don't have authority to do anything with what they have learned. Information sharing is empowering. Hoarding knowledge and withholding it is a way to maintain control. Employees need information about the organization’s mission and goals, information needed to meet team objectives, and information about their individual performance. In empowering organizations, information is no longer the property of individuals, but now belongs to the entire group. As information is more openly shared, the organization will begin to function less on the basis of opinion and bias and more on the basis of facts. Systems must be in place to enable access to both general information about the organization and also specific information about the performance of their particular department or team. Contingent rewards are difficult to design. Empowerment works best when a reward system distinguishes between employees based on performance. Empowering organizations reward employees who make decisions that contribute to the accomplishment of the organization's purpose and goals. Make sure that what is rewarded reflects goals of the organization. To automatically punish failure inhibits empowerment. It is better to reward employees for attempting new ideas, even ones that fail. Paige Leavitt, of the American Productivity and Quality Center in Houston, explains how they use rewards to encourage empowerment: “We try to foster an atmosphere that has a lot of respect for people who make a contribution. We don't expect success every time a person suggests or tries something, otherwise they won't want to try new things. If you've come up with a good idea and your supervisor sends you a thank-you note or gives you a pat on the back—that does more than anything that we can do in an employee newsletter or a public venue. [Schweitzer, C. (2004) Light-bulb leadership: Creating a culture where innovation is in. (Association Management 56(8), 31-42.)] Teams develop when individuals move outside themselves and become concerned with the success of all other members. This means that employees become concerned, not only with the success of their immediate responsibility, but also with success of the other members of the team. Then the group becomes a unit where the development of one member increases the power of the team. Alignment with the common purpose is a must. To empower people in an unaligned organization can be counterproductive. If people do not share a common vision, and do not share common goals, empowering people will increase organizational stress and make it impossible to maintain coherence and direction. An organizational commitment to empowerment would be foolish if leaders did not share the same visions and goals. Empowered organizations must structure processes, goals, people, and reward systems aligned with each other. Implementing an empowerment program There is a direct relationship between empowerment and organizational vitality. It is about the probability of change, of keeping up in a changing world. People learn best when they see a relationship between their life and the concepts being taught. Without sensing an organizational commitment to fully implement empowerment, these concepts will be very difficult to implement. Only when people have authorization to dissent with the leader do new ideas have a chance to appear. Empowerment is the key to organizational vitality
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Copyright © Don L. Morgan, 2007. All rights reserved.
