Business communication 2

Blogging-Empowerment in Leadership
Communication

Empowerment is a common term that we hear a lot about in

leadership. Empowerment is based on the belief, that employees have
the ability and want to take on more responsibility.

Managers can easily relate to this experience: You ask an employee to carry out a task that
has enough flexibility for creative input. Rather than making their own decisions, the
employee comes to you with a flurry of questions, trying to pin down the exact parameters
of the task. You become frustrated as the Manager, wondering why the employee has to ask
you permission for every tiny detail.
This isn’t an unusual phenomenon – it can be difficult to break out of the ‘leader-follower’
mindset at the workplace. The leader-follower mindset is one of the characteristics of
‘Directive’ leadership. In fact, researchers from Penn State, Claremont McKenna College,
and Tsinghua University, find that only rare, ‘transformational leaders’ are able to prevent
employees from being excessively reliant on their bosses. Transformational leaders cultivate
a team, that feels empowered and self-guided. Trust and business acumen are some of the
cornerstones in building this type of work culture. We can use this wisdom to train informed
and decisive teams that we can trust. 
Empowerment is a common term that we hear a lot about in leadership. Empowerment is
based on the belief, that employees have the ability – and want to take on more
responsibility.  Empowerment is a way to give employees greater authority, and
responsibility to take care of the needs of the customer, and to provide employees with the
means for making influential decisions. Empowerment is defined as “the giving or
delegation of power or authority; the giving of an ability, enablement or permission.”
Empowered employees understand their role in supporting the vision by taking care of the
needs of the customers. Joseph Juran (one of the early quality gurus) defined empowerment
as “conferring the right to make decisions and take action.” 
I have sense and experience a different style of leadership altogether as time moved on –
a style that was more empowering, democratic and less authoritarian. This style of
leadership placed more emphasis on ‘individualism’ and ‘creativity’ while it enabled the
progress towards organizational and business goals. Research indicates that ‘motivation to
act on a solution is the maximum when the solution comes from within oneself’ and I could
clearly see for myself the implications of this research. It was heartening to see positive
results based on my ‘own’ crafted approach and the flexibility that it offered. I was also able
to experience a greater sense of accountability since it was my approach and the onus of
producing results rested only on me. The core style would be mine whereas subtle
adjustments were prompted by the leader to fine-tune the approach. This would be done in
an ‘empowering’ way, following a consensus oriented and facilitative approach.       
Business communication 2

How do we then develop an empowering culture? 

Encourage in-the-moment feedback 
Instant, on-the-spot feedback is one way for your team to communicate issues and seek
resolution 
Cultivate the ‘executive’ mentality 
Enable team members to see the big picture 
Present new challenges and opportunities 
Important to challenge employees so that they can demonstrate and achieve their full
potential 
Respect their boundaries