Leadership for Empowerment Analyzing Leadership Practices in a Youth Care Organization Using Peer Video Reflection

Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership
& Governance
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/wasw21
Leadership for Empowerment: Analyzing

Leadership Practices in a Youth Care Organization
Using Peer Video Reflection
Arnout E. Bunders, Jacqueline E. W. Broerse & Barbara J. Regeer
To cite this article: Arnout E. Bunders, Jacqueline E. W. Broerse & Barbara J. Regeer (2021)
Leadership for Empowerment: Analyzing Leadership Practices in a Youth Care Organization
Using Peer Video Reflection, Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership &
Governance, 45:5, 431-453, DOI: 10.1080/23303131.2021.1961333
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2021.1961333
© 2021 The Author(s). Published with

license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Published online: 01 Sep 2021.
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HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE
2021, VOL. 45, NO. 5, 431–453
https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2021.1961333
Leadership for Empowerment: Analyzing Leadership Practices in a

Youth Care Organization Using Peer Video Reflection
Arnout E. Bunders , Jacqueline E. W. Broerse , and Barbara J. Regeer
Faculty of Science, Athena Institute, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In recent years, increased complexity and persistent challenges induced Empowerment; leadership;
governmental organizations to transform their ways of operating. Inherent video; peer-reflection;
to such transformations are shifts in approaches to leadership and organiza practice
tional learning. However, adopting strategies that empower staff to take
complex context-appropriate decisions has shown to be difficult. This
paper aims to gain insight into empowering and disempowering leadership
practices in complex transformation processes. Team leaders of
a governmental organization participated in observing videos of weekly
team meetings, noting positive and negative interactions between the peer-
team leader and team members. Their observations were analyzed using the
four dimensions of psychological empowerment. All team leaders showed
empowering and disempowering practices within one case discussion. The
findings illustrate in which contexts these practices are triggered. Results
help to theoretically elucidate academic debates about the relationships
between empowerment and control, differences between empowerment
and laissez-faire and between empowering and destructive leadership in
human service organizations.
1 Introduction
Rzevski (2015) defined the twenty-first century as “the century of complexity.” The mechanisms of this
complexity, according to Rzevski, have, until recently, has largely been ignored, particularly with
regard to what this means for public organizations. However, the implications are becoming more
evident, as complexity is a property that drastically impacts the way organizations are propelled to
function and learn. Generally speaking, organizations of the twenty-first century require more
“intelligent” organizing and management strategies, as very little can be controlled or anticipated in
advance. The best way to respond to complexity, is to induce internal organizational mechanisms
aimed at “distributing rather than centralizing decision-making” (Rzevski, 2015). Complexity requires
leadership that empowers people to learn together, adapt, and evolve with the organization rather than
follow predicated guidelines (Voegtlin, Boehm, & Bruch, 2015).
Indeed, with the levels of environmental, political, and operational uncertainties increasing (Li,
Wenxing, Han, & Zhang, 2016), organizations looking to adapt to these challenges need to find ways
to identify and respond more organically to external dynamics problems than ever before. Employees
that are at the forefront of daily operations are in many ways more equipped to respond intelligently to
complex challenges (Morrison, 2011), that is, if they are engaged in change-oriented organizational
behavior and stimulated to take appropriate (or meaningful) actions. Vito (2018) argued that given the
complexity of the current human services context, leadership skills of the future demand visioning,
influencing others, teamwork, and communication, all fundamental human skills that are equally needed
CONTACT Arnout E. Bunders a.e.bunders@vu.nl Faculty of Science, Athena Institute, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan
1085, Amsterdam 1081 HV, The Netherlands
© 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
432 A. E. BUNDERS ET AL.
in the middle- and top positions. Finally, scholars have argued that in order to effectively deal with
increased complexity, new ways of reflecting and learning together need to be introduced (see e.g. Lawler
& Bilson, 2010; Van Veelen, Bunders, Cesuroglu, Broerse, & Regeer, 2018) and, similarly, organizations
need to move away from too rigid (bureaucratic) forms of leadership (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015).
In light of the aforementioned reorientations, leaders are prompted to support shared-decision
making in their organization. While some forms of bureaucracy (focusing on the administrative needs
of an organization and sketching out regulations for staff members) can be helpful in stabilizing work
processes, it can be highly dysfunctional in contexts that propose a high-level uncertainty. In the case
of this current study, for instance, Dutch youth care workers generally experience a high level of
unpredictability and non-linearity in keeping children safe, in a continuously evolving political, legal,
financial, and social environment. As not one individual or leader, on their own, can make sense of
what is essentially needed for children from family to family, the need for leadership that helps all staff
members learn together (e.g. asking the right questions and coming to context-fitting solutions)
becomes essentially important. This has also been noted by scholars such as e.g. (Bernotavicz,
McDaniel, Brittain, & Dickinson, 2013), who describe child care service agencies as residing in
“permanent whitewater,” in dire need of leadership that can hold vision, and includes dimensions
of e.g. adaptation, inclusion, and collaboration (Bernotavicz et al., 2013). Similarly, this context urges
leaders to imbibe the confidence, knowledge, and skills in staff members that support them in taking
constructive decisions on their own; to be inventive and initiative-taking in their approach to
monitoring children’s safety (see e.g. Carmeli, Gelbard, & Reiter-Palmon, 2013). Van Veelen et al.
(2018), following Schon (1983) refer to this “new” role of professionals as “reflective practitioners,”
driven by purpose, rather than a set of rules. It uses “deep reflection” as a tool to reflect on learn from
and adapt to complex new experiences (e.g. Fook & Gardner, 2007). Leadership that offers the
breeding ground for such reflective practitioners is commonly referred to as empowering leadership.
Leaders who are “empowering” in their approach, are more likely to encourage innovative work
behavior, creativity, and performance in employees (Dill & Shera, 2015; Hui et al., 2019). In this article,
we will first analyze empowering leadership as a concept, then highlight the most important academic
debates about this concept before we formulate the aim and research questions, which will focus on
identifying and understanding empowering and disempowering leadership practices in daily organi
zational life of a youth care organization.
Empowering leadership as a concept

Empowering leadership and/or employee empowerment has increasingly come to be seen as a crucial
factor for employee and team development (Oakland & Oakland, 2001; Voegtlin et al., 2015; Wallach &
Mueller, 2006) because it can lead to better job satisfaction, enhanced performance at work (Cheong,
Yammarino, Dionne, Spain, & Tsai, 2019), more effective participation (Spreitzer, 2008), and a greater
sense of self-efficacy and self-determination (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Zhang and Bartol (2010) have
specified the concept of empowering leadership and posit that a leadership style aiming for empower
ment is conceptually and empirically related to developing in employees the four dimensions of
psychological empowerment: self-determination, competence, impact, and meaning (p.110):
(1) . . . ’leaders must empower employees with autonomy and opportunities for self-determination
by giving individuals space to manage their responsibilities’;
(2) . . . “leaders expressing confidence in their [the employees”] competence and performance’;
(3) . . . ’leaders must encourage employees to “participate in decision-making”; when employees
have the feeling they can influence their work process, then they are empowered on the impact
dimension’;
(4) . . . ’leaders must enhance the meaningfulness of work, by helping an employee understand the
importance of his or her contribution to overall organizational effectiveness’.
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE 433
Empowering leadership has been described as a way of creating a vision for change (Mary, 2005),
sharing power with employees and focusing on enhancing their sense of autonomy and accountability
(e.g. Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000). Employees are stimulated by the leader to participate
in collaborative decision-making by sharing their ideas and views. Empowering leaders try to establish
a sense of psychological ownership of a team member and its team for the tasks they need to
accomplish. The task of the leader is to facilitate team learning and team problem-solving and to
secure the alignment of the team’s decisions with the goals of the organization (Hardina, 2005;
Lorinkova, Pearsall, Henry, & Sims, 2013). Although Cheong et al. (2019) clearly demonstrated
there are many varieties of empowering leadership, including e.g. transformative, participatory and
self-leadership, empowering leadership contradicts more directive forms of leadership, in which
leaders are engaged in top-down control and regulation (Cheong et al., 2019). Laissez-faire types of
leaders are again different in the sense that they allow for much freedom, but also refrain from getting
involved otherwise (Wong & Giessner, 2018) and thus are negatively associated to leadership out
comes (Mary, 2005). Empowering leadership can be distinguished from either of the above styles in
the distinct effect it has on employees, in the sense that they should indeed feel more capable of acting
on their own authority, and take responsibility for their actions in relation to a common vision (Ciulla,
2004). A specific distinction is made between empowering and laissez-faire leadership because the two
can be easily confused but are not the same (Yang, 2015). Studies show that leaders often dabble
between questions of intervention or nonintervention, sometimes opting to wait in order to leave
room for the team to respond independently (Murari, 2013).
Empowering leadership is commonly seen as more difficult and risk-taking from a leader’s per
spective, as it allows staff members more intellectual responsibility and stimulates a more nonhier
archical way of monitoring professional roles and actions. The multitude of uncertainties experienced
in complex and dynamic work fields can similarly add to leader’s disposition to control, rather than
reflect, and distribute power (Stacey, 2009). Stacey (2009) furthermore explains that some leaders are
not actually motivated to empower staff members, as it confronts them with a different professional
identity (and in that they move away from a more traditional “directing” type of role). Leaders who
may see themselves as empowering, may in fact be more authoritarian and sometimes even emotion
ally abusive in their day-to-day interactions. This is also why Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2013),
often refer to leadership as relationship management, requiring a great deal of emotional intelligence
to navigate the human interactions that work practices comprise (Goleman et al., 2013). Argyris and
Schon (1974) originally explained the phenomenon as a difference between what leaders say they value
(espoused theory) and what they do in reality (theory-in-practice). Therefore, the way leaders practice
various interactions which are either helpful (empowering) or disruptive (disempowering), in specific
transformative work contexts, is less well understood.
Academic debates around empowering leadership

Despite the relatively well-established theory around empowerment, various scholars critique empow
ering leadership. Alvesson and Einola (2019) argue that a group of leadership styles, which can be
clubbed together as “positive leadership,” are too optimistic and positive, e.g. by only studying positive
(empowering) practices and not negative (disempowering) practices. If their suggestion to study
positive and negative leadership practices side by side is followed up, it might also show light on
a related debate, which is relevant for the understanding of leadership practice and development in
present human service organizations: the relevance of empowering leadership in daily practices
(Austin, Regan, Samples, Schwartz, & Carnochan, 2011; Bozer, Kuna, & Santora, 2015; Brimhall &
Mor Barak, 2018; Vito, 2018). This debate started decades ago and still continues; e.g. Cheong, Spain,
Yammarino, and Yun (2016) cites Argyris that empowerment is still very much of an illusion (Argyris,
1998; Cheong et al., 2016).
A key element in this debate is how empowering leadership takes into account issues of control,
especially in public welfare organizations built on bureaucratic ideals. A new conceptualization of this
question was developed by Uhl-Bien and Arena (2017). In their article, they suggest that leaders in
adaptive (complex) organizations should capitalize on the tension created between the entrepreneurial
system (i.e incorporating aspects of learning, motivating, growth, and innovation), and the operational
system (e.g. incorporating aspects that push for order, standardization, alignment, and control), thus
ensuring the ongoing viability of an organization. Enabling leadership is conceptualized as a type of
leadership that works at the interface of structure (operational system) and innovation (entrepreneur
ial system). In the face of complexity, enabling leaders are asked to create adaptive spaces in which
both systems can interact and connect in a fruitful manner (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2017). We suggest that
empowering leadership in a youth care organization and enabling leadership in a business environ
ment, might both be understood as a type of leadership that does not oppose structure but can be
viewed as the “handling” of recurrent tensions, as a way to respond to complexity and the need for
stabilization (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2017). Something similar is put forward by Rønningstad (2019), who
argues that leadership is not always limited by more “managerial input/operational actions,” especially
in work that is less standardized, thus showing that in more complex (unpredictable) work situations,
staff members might feel more empowered when leaders exhibit some level of control and firm
decision-making as well (Rønningstad, 2019). Studying and evaluating daily leadership practices
might give us a deeper insight into how these tensions are dealt with within practice.
In terms of evaluation, the tacit nature of human behavior makes it inherently challenging to study
the concept of empowering leadership. Although it is agreed that empowering leadership clearly
comprises principles such as e.g. shared decision-making, support and facilitation autonomy, less has
been done to understand how these dimensions can be operationalized in real-life contexts. Ample
leadership studies focus on leaders’ personality traits, rather than considering the context in which
people express such a role and with what motivations (e.g. Northouse, 2010; Zaccaro, 2007). While
there are various psychometric instruments (such as self-reports) to measure the properties of
empowering leadership, these instruments generally rely on the explicit, semantic rationales of people
engaged in analyzing their own behavior (see e.g. Cheong et al., 2019). These instruments are criticized
for ignoring the significance of unconscious behavior, and automatic, unintentional processes that
happen when leaders are not explicitly oriented toward evaluating their own attitudes and practices.
Cheong et al. (2019) mentions that leaders’ empowering motivations could only be well evaluated and
understood in settings that are more implicit, and more inductive in nature. Hence, in this study, we
adopted a peer video-reflection method, combined with open content analysis, to understand how
empowering leadership practices emerge in a real-life setting. In recent years, video reflection has
received increasing attention from organizational scholars because they can zoom in on verbal,
material, spatial, symbolic, and bodily cues, asking open questions about how these interactions
shape organizational practice (Clarke, 2011).
Study premise
With the current study, we aim to contribute to the discussion on how leaders can respond to
complexity by focusing more specifically on understanding how leaders put the form of empowering
leadership into practice in their day-to-day practices. As the current understanding persists that
empowering leadership, or conceptually related forms of leadership, are especially helpful in the
face of complexity, what seems to be lacking is a better operationalization of the concept and its
dimensions (Praszkier, 2015). Similarly, as introduced earlier, studies show that some questions
remain as to whether and when empowering leaders might exhibit features of control and structure
in the context of complexity. Empowering leadership is often studied in relation to proximal outcomes
(e.g. self-efficacy, enhanced self-esteem, enjoyment at work, etc.), and distal outcomes (e.g. level of
performance), yet less clarity has been derived on what constitutes empowering leadership as
a consistent set of empowering measures in various leadership situations (e.g. Amundsen &
Martinsen, 2014). There seems to be a growing need for guidelines for practitioners on how to include
empowering leadership in their practice, yet scholars remain rather ambiguous on what it means to
e.g. “embrace uncertainty” and “encourage employees” knowledge and skills’ (Praszkier, 2015).
This paper aims to contribute to the theory of empowering leadership and how it is operationalized
by exploring the barriers and enablers for empowerment in day-to-day leadership practices. A specific
focus is employed on how family managers and team members, including the team leaders, act, and
communicate in team meetings, 2 years after the implementation of an organizational change and the
new work method FFPS. We hope to gain insight into (1) the interactions and practices that are
considered empowering and disempowering, and (2) how these interactions can be related to the four
dimensions of empowering leadership, as described by Zhang and Bartol (2010), based on psycholo
gical empowerment. With these insights, we hope also to advance the discussion on some of the
fundamental questions raised in the debates. Team meetings constitute a naturalistic setting for the
study because this is where the interactions between family managers and team leaders take place in
a regular and structured process.
2 Case description
The aim of Child and Youth Protection Services in Amsterdam (CYPSA) in the Netherlands is to
protect children and ensure their safety. Some children live in families experiencing problems, such as
domestic violence, sexual abuse, alcohol, and drug abuse, criminal behavior by the child or family,
malnutrition, and debt problems. These factors inhibit a safe environment in which a child can grow
up. Family managers at CYPSA are tasked with making sure the child is safe, and grows up in a secure
environment. In cases where there is too much resistance to change on the part of the parents or
family, the family manager can obtain a court order to force them to comply. The last resort to ensure
safety is to remove the child from the parents’ care.
CYPSA underwent an executive crisis in 2008 and was placed under the supervision of the Dutch
Youth Care Inspection Agency. It was also experiencing financial problems, and employees’ job
satisfaction was at a low point. In response to these challenges, management decided that, for the
organization to survive, a radical organizational change was needed from a previously bureaucratic
and procedural one to a more learning and network-based organization (Van Veelen et al., 2018; Van
Veelen, Regeer, Broerse, Van De Poel, & Dinkgreve, 2017). Subsequently, the CYPSA shifted from
a procedural work process to one that was phased and goal-oriented, with its mission formulated as
“every child safe.” The difference between the two kinds of work processes is fundamental: while the
procedural work process was triggered by incidents, leaving root causes untouched, a phase-based
approach ensures that underlying problematic patterns and family dynamics are identified and
resolved, and goals are realized before the family manager closes the case.
The introduction of three phases (phase 1: motivating and engaging; phase 2: support and
monitoring; phase 3: generalizing and safeguarding) into the organization’s everyday working process
necessitated a change in the orientation of the professional from a focus on only the child to a focus on
both the child and his/her environment, i.e. the family. To bring about this change, youth care
professionals (family managers) were trained in the principles and methods of Functional Family
Parole Services (FFPS) (Darnell & Schuler, 2015; Sexton & Turner, 2011), a validated method for
system intervention into juvenile delinquency that was adapted for the Dutch context and generalized
to the youth protection field. This intervention called for a more holistic perspective to ensure child
safety, requiring case-by-case tailor-made solutions from the family manager during each phase of the
process. Such work is inevitably characterized by high complexity and uncertainty. Family managers
make difficult decisions, often during dramatic events. These conditions call for empowered and
creative employees who feel confident and competent to take these decisions with the best interests
and safety of children at heart.
With the changed work process, the structure and organizational culture was also pushed to change
(Van Veelen et al., 2018, 2017). The organization was restructured to operate more horizontally.
Approximately 30 teams were restructured to include around seven family managers (each dealing
with approximately 10 families and the children’s safety), a team leader, a senior family manager
(expert in FFPS), and a psychologist (behavioral expert). During weekly team meetings, each team
takes decisions and reflects on the family managers’ cases with the ultimate goal of achieving the
organization’s mission.
In these team meetings, chaired by the team leaders, child safety, family patterns, and behaviors,
issues relating to other caring professionals, legal aspects, and the way forward are discussed. Each
case is in a specific phase of the work process. In the first phase (motivating and engaging), team
members try to make sense of the complexity in which the child lives, while continually assessing
the child’s safety. In the team meetings, the family manager needs to present a good overview of the
problems and possible solutions, as well as in-depth analyses of the root causes, so that these issues
can be discussed together to develop appropriate solutions that can be implemented by the family
manager. During the second phase (supporting and monitoring), a plan is already established and
the family managers refer the family to care providers to deal with issues like aggression control,
debt relief, or psychological care. The family manager discusses the cases in the team meeting when
new issues come up, e.g., if the parents no longer want to cooperate or the care providers do not
want to proceed with treatment. During the third phase (generalizing and safeguarding), the family
manager has assessed the child’s situation as safe and wants to close the case by making sure
safeguards are in place. The family manager presents a plan at the team meeting and reflects with
the other team members to determine if the safeguards are sufficient and that no issues have been
overlooked.
All these changes also required a new form of leadership. In the old organization, leaders would
distribute cases and were tasked to control the output of decisions made by professionals, and monitor
whether procedures and protocols were followed. The new method required more reflexivity and
responsibility from the family manager and the team leader was tasked to facilitate this process. The
board of the CYPSA established a leadership program a year after the organizational change, run by team
leaders themselves to develop new appropriate leadership practices. Activities, such as workshops, sharing
of leadership best practices and peer video reflection were organized to develop the new leadership
practice. Although the organizational change created the willingness of the team leaders to reflect and
develop their practices, for most of them, this was the first formal leadership training. Before they became
team leaders, they were professionals themselves and mastered their profession as case managers.
Therefore, they were considered as suited to guide/control the working process. However, challenges
would clearly arise as these managers were not guided or trained to lead teams in a transitionary and
complex environment, which often happens in the service sector (Bernotavicz et al., 2013).
3 Methodology
Study approach
This study was based on an action learning design in which team leaders were involved in a video-
reflection format to stimulate learning 2 years after the new working method of FFPS was introduced.
The video reflection method is based on the conceptual underpinning of Reflexive Monitoring in Action
(RMA) (see e.g. Van Mierlo et al., 2010). The premise of RMA is that participants learn in cycles about
their practice by reflecting on it together. In this study, leaders were encouraged to become aware of
their practices and to reflect on the origin and outcomes of their actions in their leadership context.
The video-reflection method is a method that stimulates reflexive monitoring in action, and
similarly draws on the joint aspect of learning. The method is based on the idea that leaders reflect
on each other’s practices as well, to derive a sense of what are valuable learning points within the
leadership arena. Most team leaders involved in this study had been leading team meetings for over 2
years and had experiential knowledge about what would be beneficial and detrimental to the team’s
atmosphere. The peer video reflection method, including several focus group discussions to discuss the
content of the video’s were used to stimulate joined knowledge building.
Research process
All team leaders were invited to participate on a voluntary basis. Sixteen out of the in total 16 team
leaders at CYPSA (12 women and 4 men), with an average age of 46 years, participated and there were
no dropouts. Two team leaders had junior experience, four had mid-level experience, and nine had
senior experience at CYPSA. All participants had at least a bachelor's degree. All leaders were filmed
while guiding a team meeting for 2.5 hours, including seven family managers, a senior family manager,
and a psychologist. The videos concentrated on the interactions between the team leader and the other
members, especially the family managers.
In the first phase, the team meetings were recorded, after which the material was shared with
both the respective team leaders, and one appointed peer leader. The peer team leader was invited
to reflect on the video material, and leave comments on an evaluation sheet in response to three
broadly formulated questions. This method of questioning peer leaders to reflect on the practices
of their fellow team leaders was derived from approaches such as described by Fook and Gardner
(2007), which encourage critical reflection to deconstruct and analyze personal and/or profes
sional experiences to understand the different assumptions, relationships, and influences, and how
it affects practice. Similarly, allowing study participants to (partly) take part in the process of
analysis can help to validate the research outcomes (e.g. (Baum, MacDougall, & Smith, 2006).
The first question prompted peer leaders to reflect on any “eye-openers” they observed, e.g. practices
that were considered or experienced by them as e.g. interesting, new, important, beneficial. Secondly,
peers were invited to be more specific about how this particular practice impacted the team meeting, why
it worked, and how this compared to their experience as a leader. Thirdly, peers were asked to ask “critical
questions” with regard to those practices that were questionable to them, and be specific about why they
were doubtful and/or critical in these instances. They could comment on non-verbal as well as verbal
actions, expressions, and gestures, and the supposed impact these practices had, according to them.
Next, the evaluation sheets with peer comments, as well as video materials were collected and
shared with the original team leaders. The participants received their video back with the comments of
the peers incorporated as dialog boxes. At a later stage, the material was also used as prompts for
further learning sessions, which will not be discussed in this article. The total database used for the
study comprised footage of 40 hours (16 × 2.6 hours).
Analysis
The analysis of the data again included two phases. First, the comments of the peer leaders were
analyzed to gain a basic understanding of the themes that were valued by the team leaders themselves.
Many of the comments were found to be focused on empowerment of the team, while some comments
were more centered around other topics. The evaluation sheets were read, and re-read by two
independent researchers, and particularly those comments that were relevant for the content of this
study were analyzed. This meant that these comments were back-traced to the original video material
and scrutinized for its meaning. Through this “shared analysis,” the research team gained a solid sense
of what practices were considered “empowering” and which were considered “disempowering.”
Second, the remaining video material was viewed several times by two independent researchers to
explore which practices might be considered empowering and disempowering, based on the oper
ationalization of the concept by Zhang and Bartol (2010). Their understanding of the concept
“empowering leadership” entails four dimensions, including self-termination, competence, impact,
and meaning. The four dimensions were operationalized as illustrated in Table 1. For disempowering
practices, the exact opposite practices were coded. After a round of semi-open coding conducted by
Table 1. Operationalization empowerment practices.

Dimensions of psychological
empowerment Operationalized practice of a leader in a team meeting
Self-determination During the team meetings, the leader sets an atmosphere where employees feel free and safe to
act and to decide what steps are to be taken and how. This is manifested by team members
taking ownership of their case by relating what is discussed to their own past and future
actions.
Competence During the team meetings, the leader helps the team members to realize their competences
and abilities to get the job done by commenting positively on the shown competences, and
by starting discussions in a supportive and appreciative way on how these strengths can be
further improved.
Impact During the team meetings, the leader shows team members that their ideas are heard and
followed up, e.g. by summarizing and stimulating further inquiry. The leader also encourages
them to participate in the decision-making of cases other than their own, thus facilitating the
assessment of different perspectives.
Meaning During the team meetings, the leader tries to enhance the team members’ acquiring their sense
of meaning, such as by referring to goals and values of the organization.
both researchers, a final coding list was discussed and developed. Accordingly, the videos were studied
in-depth to understand the specific context of the practices. The codes were categorized according to
the four dimensions, and discussed by the entire research team.
This study was part of a larger action-oriented study on the transformation of CYPSA, in which the
two primary researchers were involved for more than 5 years. This helped to validate some findings
from the videos, as these primary researchers were emerged in the field over a longer period of time
than the duration of the current study. As such, they could deeply understand and reflect on the data
collection as valid expressions of reality. Other researchers in the team helped to avoid confirmation
bias, by carefully co-analyzing the video footage.
Ethical considerations
According to Dutch law, no formal ethical approval is needed to elicit the perspectives of professionals.
We adhered to the Dutch code of conduct for scientific practice, and to the privacy norms of CYPSA.
Privacy concerns and the provision of a safe environment to discuss the CYPSA’s work were
considered. The issues concerning families and children are highly sensitive and private. Given that
family cases are already discussed during team meetings of the CYPSA, the comments made on
evaluation sheets and in videos were shared with all participants, understanding the confidentiality
that is already practiced during these meetings. In order to protect this information from unknown
users, the videos were kept on CYPSA’s protected digital network and destroyed afterward. Evaluation
sheets were anonymized, so only participants of the reflection sessions and the research team knew the
identity of respondents. The evaluation sheets were checked to ensure that no comments implicated
any specific child or family.
The decisions taken in the CYPSA meetings are often very complex and highly emotional, when, for
instance, the decision is taken to remove a child from its family. Videotaping this process should not
be intrusive, so a small camera was used for discretion. If team members did not feel comfortable
talking in front of the camera, it was turned off, and only turned on when everybody agreed (which
happened twice when a severe case was discussed and it lasted approximately 5 min). All team
members agreed to be recorded with the understanding that the videos were being used to improve
learning and for research purposes.
4 Findings
We present team leaders’ empowering and disempowering practices as observed by peer leaders in the
videos. A total of 16 team meetings, each comprising an average of five case discussions, were
commented on by peers. When referring to the family managers and team leaders we will use “she”
irrespective of the respondent’s sex. Below Table 2 contains a summary of the results of the study,
which are specified in detail below under the headings of the four dimensions of psychological
empowerment.
4.1 Self-determination
Autonomy is significant in the dimension of self-determination. Autonomy is the extent to which
employees have the latitude to make empowering decisions, and leaders support this by providing
a constructive atmosphere. It requires trust and a willingness in leaders to show confidence in and
entrust power to their employees.
Empowering practices
Looking at the practices that were considered empowering, a distinguishable leadership quality is to
establish a conducive atmosphere for open and constructive discussion among team members.
Imperative to this quality is for leaders to postpone individual judgment and solutions, and delegate
responsibility to the team to discuss challenges openly. An example was a discussion in a team meeting
about a problematic family pattern that presented uncertainty about how to move forward. The
introducing family manager was very involved and explained that the case triggered her emotionally.
She asked the team leader how to deal with this and how to proceed with the help for the family. In the
video, it was observed that the team leader did not answer the question herself but opened the
discussion for questions and suggestions. This helped the responsible family manager to feel supported
Table 2. Team leaders’ (dis)empowering practices according to the dimensions of psychological empowerment.
Dimensions Empowering practice Disempowering practice
Self-determination Team leaders postpone advise or judgment and Team leaders fail to provide guidelines on how to
ask open questions to allow the family managers ask constructive questions (open ended, intended
to take ownership. on learning and oriented to meaningful solutions).
Team leaders actively appreciate and reaffirm the Team leaders show a lack of faith in family managers’
decision-making process of family managers, to ability to direct the problem-solving process, and
enhance their confidence. use their leadership position to reassume the
lead.
Competence Team leaders orient family managers to their The team leader makes, or allows for, correcting
accomplishments in dealing with complex cases, remarks without giving constructive support.
indicating that the family manager has useful
strengths and is able to use required
competencies.
Team leaders facilitate a helicopter view by posing
open-ended questions to family managers,
helping them focus and clarify critical aspects of
their case, and training their competences to do
this regularly.
Team leaders help distinguish between first
and second order learning questions.
Impact The team leader facilitates by inviting and valuing Interrupting /ridiculing input of team members.
contributions of team members and stimulating Dismissive remarks and lack of listening.
mutual learning.
Meaning Focusing on organization’s purpose, aligning Failing to intervene when employees do not take
practical work goals with the organization’s responsibility to work from perspective of the
purpose and values. organization’s purpose and values.
by the whole team and direct her attention to their ideas. Only after a lively and constructive
discussion with several new insights and useful suggestions, did the team leader herself make her
suggestion. This approach was appreciated by a peer reviewer who wrote:
. . . the team leader gives much space for interaction. She adds her tip at a time when the family manager is open to
it. In this way, the family manager does not see her contribution as an order, but is open to it because it is an
additional suggestion. (TL 3)
The peer reviewer complimented the team leader that she did not excessively control the space and
time of the introducing family manager and that she allowed her to organize the learning and decision-
making process herself. In this way, the family manager was more aware of her own actions and
emotions and was open to tips about how to deal with emotional tensions and which techniques she
could use in this family.
Another empowering practice concerns the ability of leaders to reaffirm and appreciate the course
of decision-making among team members. As an example, self-determination was exercised in
a rather complicated circumstances where the encountered difficulty was related to a blurred boundary
between the professional and the private spheres. The case included members of a family she was
otherwise encountering in the private sphere, e.g. the tennis club. The team leader dealt with this
proposed challenge in an empowering way, strengthening the family manager’s feeling of being able to
determine the situation herself. In this case, one of the peer reviewers observed:
The team leader acknowledges the family manager for stating her work boundaries and supports her in her decision
to hand over the case to another family manager. When a case intrudes in the private domain, it is okay to hand it
over. (TL10)
Disempowering practices
Disempowering practices potentially hinder the ability of family managers to self-direct their work.
The first disempowering practice found in the reflections of peer-leaders concerns a laissez-faire
approach in leaders concerning the quality of the discussions around challenging cases. In such
situations, the leader fails to provide team-members with guidelines on how to e.g. ask constructive
questions. In general, questions that were experienced as supported were open-ended, and oriented
toward reaffirming someone’s expertise, creating more insight and learning (together). Questions that
were considered disempowering were often closed, and were oriented toward fact-checking or control.
For instance, instead of asking: “did you check the legal regulations on this issue?,” one might rather ask:
“how do you/how confident do you- feel about the legal guidelines on this issue?” and “On your
experience, what do you think could be done in a different way?,” or “what has already worked so far?.”
In one example, after a presentation in which a family manager reported that her relationship with
the family had improved and that therefore a court order did not need to be extended, the team leader
responded by asking: “Who disagrees with the decision?” allowing each team member to comment on
the issue. While some team members asked questions and agreed with the suggestion of the family
manager, other team members asked very critical questions, which were not relevant to the situation,
e.g. whether the report is up to date, and so on. The peer reviewer observed a disempowering practice:
The team members are asking questions to check the family manager, rather than clarify for the family manager.
The whole discussion remains superficial. (TL 1)
Instead of complimenting the family manager with the progress she had made and guiding the
discussion, the team leader allowed, in this case, the team members to problematize the family
manager on issues not relevant to decisions that need to be taken. The team leader seemed to be
oblivious to the problem that the family manager might feel attacked by irrelevant criticism.
A second disempowering practice refers to team leaders’ insecurity leading them to reassume
authority over the learning and decision-making process. Instead of allowing other team members to
direct the discussion regarding their own case, team leaders take over. A peer reviewer commented on
a specific case:
The family manager begins to answer the question and the team leader suddenly interrupts. From then on she
continues to lead the discussion. Why not let the lead be with the family manager or the team? (TL12)
There might be insecurity and time-pressures involved which compelled leaders to close a discussion,
in fact, especially when the top priority is to find a solution for a child’s perilous situation. In situations
of high risk, team leaders tended to take over the responsibility of the team members and come up with
straightforward solutions that might not always be inclusive and/or sufficiently comprehensive. In
many cases, this was disempowering for family managers because they needed to understand the root
causes of the problems and the working mechanisms of specific solutions before they could effectively
work with a suggested solution. Self-determination in these cases was thus seen to decline also due to
a lack of understanding of the suggested solutions.
One example in which self-determination was compromised happened when a family manager felt
attacked and undermined in one of her case presentations. A team psychologist asked who could help
the family manager. The team leader, however, reacted to this question herself and gave a complete view
of what the family manager responsible for the case needed to do even asking the family manager to
write these suggestions down. The peer reviewer was critical about this intervention and explains why.
‘Who can help this family manager?’ I think this should be your question, but the team leader immediately reacts
and gives a complete plan. After the comments, the leader asks: ’why don’t you write this down?’ The family manager
feels attacked. This is a pitfall for us. Often, we already know what the plan should be while the rest is still puzzling.
It is an art to wait, even if this takes time. (TL1)
4.2 Competence
It is important that leaders show that they have faith in the competencies and performance of their
employees. Competences include the entirety of knowledge, abilities, skills, and attitudes that family
managers require to work effectively.
The first empowering practice concerns instilling confidence by reorienting family managers to their
accomplishments in dealing with complex cases. This is illustrated by the following example. A family
manager asked the team if she needed a court order because the family had many problems, and she
seemed unable to move forward with the plan. The team leader in charge asked her to reflect on all she
had achieved instead of thinking about a court order. The peer reviewer commented:
The team leader empowers the family manager; the team leader said: ‘by the way, you accomplished already a lot,
can you see you might not need a court order based on what you have already achieved?’. (TL11)
By intervening, the team leader assured the family manager of her competences when she had
temporarily lost oversight of the situation, making it easier for her to regain control and confidence
to continue to work with the family. Still, it is important to note that praise in itself is not necessarily
productive and could also have a counterproductive effect. Sometimes praise for a family manager’s
competence is used merely to soften a sharp criticism of her activities. A praise is effective when it
concerns a practice that is actually relevant to the issue and the person.
A second empowering practice somewhat relates to an earlier quality of asking good open-ended
questions to stimulate learning and enhance the competencies of critical reflection. In the next
example, the team leader discussed a family manager’s caseload with the help of a software program
in which the progress of each case is visualized. The purpose was to gain an understanding of the core
issues of all the cases and to identify blind spots.
The team leader asked: ‘what do you notice about this case?’ Good question and the family manager gave a good
answer. (TL 1)
This question motivated the family manager to focus on the critical aspects of the case. The question
was posed in a friendly and open manner with the result that the family manager became open in what
went well but also what was difficult without feeling incompetent.
A third empowering practice is related to strengthening confidence in being able to distinguish
between issues that can be resolved through first-order questions (not questioning basis assumptions)
(Morgan, 2019) and second-order questions (in which basic assumptions are explored by using
different perspectives) (Fulop & Mark, 2013). In one example, the family manager presented her
situation and wondered whether she could close the case. The team leader intervened and explained
the complexity of this question and why this question could not be answered in a simple way by
answering yes or no, and instead showed her how to proceed. The peer reviewer wrote:
After the question from the family manager, the team leader explains the difference between a 1st order and 2nd
order question. The team leader rephrases the question too: What did JBRA do or can JBRA do to make sure the
child becomes safe and remains safe? (TL 10)
By explaining the different types of problem-solving approaches and linking these in a clear way to the
family manager’s own practice, she helped the family manager to realize that she could answer the
question herself. In this way, she not only helped her to solidify her competences but also her
confidence in it.
First of all, feelings of incompetence can easily arise when a team leader’s interactions are oriented
toward correcting. For example, in a case discussion in a team meeting, the team leader told the team
members that the plan for action was not adequate. She asked the team members to identify what was
lacking. She hoped to get the answer that the plan should be written less with the parents in mind, and
more with the focus on the children. In the video of the team meeting, the team members did not come
up with the right answer to the question and the team leader finally remarked what was missing, which
in retrospect they felt was an obvious answer, and clearly felt a bit awkward and not competent. The
peer reviewer reacted as follows:
Your remark is correcting. Could you not do this better by asking a question? Instead of saying what you think is
wrong? (TL7)
The suggestion of the peer reviewer was that the team leader could have avoided this uneasiness if she
had asked further questions to help the team members to find what was lacking in the plan.
4.3 Impact
On the dimension of impact, empowering leaders encourage employees to see how their inputs
influence the general work process. Here, for example, it is important that team members feel they
can participate in decision-making across various cases, and that their ideas are followed up.
Empowering leaders were described by peer leaders to empower practices that trigger inclusive
discussion and reflection. In an exemplary case, an extremely tense family manager was introducing
a complicated and challenging case. She explained as much as possible, but her elaboration lacked
structure. She knew a lot about the case but was insecure about how to move forward. The team leader
reduced the tension by acknowledging the breadth and depth of information given by the family
manager (which is empowering on the competence dimension) and followed up by inviting and
facilitating the team to think along with the family manager and generate various approaches to
realize positive impact. The peer reviewer appreciated the approach taken by the team leader:
The team leader is asking the other team members explicitly to think with the family manager, Good! [. . .]. (TL1)
The team leader facilitates empowerment on the impact dimension by empowering other team
members to contribute and by making their ideas feel heard and valued.
Another empowering practice concerns actively supporting involvement of all team members
who find it difficult to participate in the discussion. During a discussion, a family manager made
a remark and asked a question to shed new light on the discussion. Due to an interruption, the remark
was not used in the discussion. The team leader intervened and asked the family manager if she could
say it again, in order to include this perspective in the analysis. The peer reviewer appreciated this
intervention.
The team leader gives specific notion to the words said by one family member, wanting her question to be heard. (TL 10)
A disempowering practice found by peer-leaders concerned team leaders being dismissive or negligent
of the input of team members, which could be discouraging and stop team members from contributing
their ideas. From the videos, it was found that in some cases, leaders begin the discussion by openly
inviting ideas and suggestions from the entire group, but, as the discussion develops, disregard the
input of some people in the group, while emphasizing only the opinion of certain experts. This
deviation was observed when, for instance, the leader would not acknowledge or follow-up on the
suggestions of team members, and, instead, would ask everyone to consider how to apply the ideas of
the behavioral expert who was present. A peer leader reflects on how, while cutting of a family
manager, a team leader starts a parallel, exclusive discussion with the psychologist:
You cut off the family manager and ask what the opinion of the psychologist is, and now the family manager cannot
really enter the discussion anymore. You and the psychologist are laughing together. Please watch out for that (TL 12)
The peer leader also shows concern for the way team members might feel when their inputs are
laughed at or ridiculed (even if done so indirectly). A leader who shows inconsistencies in their
appreciation of all ideas (regardless of whether they are eventually taken up or not), risks to disem
power the team members on the impact dimension.
4.4 Meaning
On the dimension of meaning, it is important that employees feel that their work is essential for the
organization in realizing its purpose and effectiveness. In other words, the leader needs to support the
family managers in clarifying the meaningfulness of the work at all times.
The empowering practices that were observed generally refer to leaders focusing on the purpose of the
organization and aligning practical work outcomes to the purpose. For example, during one team
meeting, the team reflected on a family of which the parents were advised to receive relationship
counseling. It was suggested that if the parents denied counseling, the organization should stop
supporting the parents. This was a problem the family manager wanted to discuss, and the team was
brainstorming about what CYPSA should do if the parents were not willing to enter a counseling
process. In focusing intensely on the need to help the parents understand that this was in their best
interest, the team leader felt that the family manager had lost sight of the child’s perspective. In order
to guide the discussion, the team leader reiterated the purpose of the CYPSA – “every child safe” – and
that any decision should be taken with this purpose in mind. This was reviewed positively by one peer
reviewer:
It is good that the question, make sure the focus is returned to the children, what is our core task of the organization.
(TL12)
The family manager appreciated this but often drifted back to talk only about the relationship of the
parents. By intervening in a friendly manner and bringing back the focus to the children, the family
manager needed to reflect on what this means for the children. This helped her in understanding the
case better, but also what it meant and why it is important.
A critical element of the CYPSA guidelines is that the organization's approach is to focus on the
family’s strengths, not its weaknesses. In practice, this is not always easy, and family managers can
become frustrated when the same problems continue to affect families. It is the task of the team leader
to be very alert to this issue and reiterate the importance of the strength-based approach. This does not
always happen, as exemplified in one scenario. From the tense face of a team leader, it could be
observed that during the whole case discussion she was under stress because it was almost impossible
for her to guide/control the presenting family manager, who kept on telling old, and not so relevant,
stories about the case and ignored important principles of the work. As one peer reviewer exemplified
in her criticism of the team leader’s actions (or lack thereof):
The family manager does not know how to connect the dots between mother and son, and wants to control the
family and becomes outraged. She demands to the mother: ‘You do what I say or there will be consequences’. I do not
have faith. This family manager does not follow our working methods, so the team leader should intervene. (TL13)
Here the peer leader was bringing attention to the team leader’s lack of intervention. By ignoring the
family manager’s frustrated actions toward the family, the team leader exhibited a negative practice
that undermined the integrity of the strengths-based approach and the values on which the organiza
tion is based. A violation of the organization’s approach by a family manager, which is not addressed
by a team leader, can lead to confusion for team members about what is relevant or meaningful.
Another example is the story of a family manager who encountered substantial resistance from
a family and was beginning to resign herself to their ways. The peer reviewer comments addressed the
team leader’s action:
Why are you not reacting, if the family manager says that she will not increase her effort if she meets resistance? (TL 12)
This peer felt that the team leader should have discussed the family manager’s approach further and
reiterated the organization’s purpose: protecting every child and working with families based on their
strengths.
5 Discussion
In this study, we aimed to gain insights into (dis-)empowering leadership practices in complex
transformation processes. To this end, we studied the day-to-day reality of the youth care organization
CYPSA, which is in a transition to become more adaptive to complexity. This transition requires
CYPSA’s team leaders to become more empowering in their leadership approach, and brought up
questions regarding how and when leaders display practices that could be considered (dis-)empower
ing. Acknowledging the inherent complexity of studying leadership practices, this study, using the
instrument of peer video reflection, helped to elicit rich material on how leadership is expressed in
various situations, and to see what was perceived as (dis-)empowering. In this section, we will first
discuss the most relevant findings with regard to the research questions and relate these to the
fundamental concerns about empowering leadership raised in the introduction. After that, we will
analyze three sets of findings more in-depth to understand further how and why empowering leader
ship can be so tricky and how these difficulties can be addressed. This analysis will result in a typology
of empowering and disempowering leadership practices, which aims to provide theoretical insights
and practical guidance.
The findings from this study, first of all, gives strength to the notion that context is significantly
important (in our study: the interactions visible in the team discussions that preceded the moment of
the comments of the peers) and the situations that leaders encounter, prompt them to display a wide
variety of either helpful or less helpful leadership practices. Indeed, in the behavior of leaders, peer
reviewers distinguished a variety of (dis-)empowering practices within one and the same leader. Their
leadership traits were not stable over time, and fluctuated relatively easily. Collins and Jackson (2015)
provide an explanation for this finding. Building on the theory of attentional resource capacity, they
found that as task difficulty increases, a leader’s capacity for attention, inversely decreases, leading to
more destructive behavior. Also, a leader’s attention capacity may become overwhelmed by the
experience of high levels of negative emotions and insecurity, resulting in self-regulation impairment
and destructive leadership. When task difficulty is low, or when negative emotions do not overwhelm
attentional resource capacity; then, self-regulation is effective, giving rise to more constructive leader
ship. Similarly, Yang Ying (2010) found that empowerment behavior in leaders is dependent on their
analysis of the organizational interest risks involved, and their willingness, at that moment, to either
takes on or avoid risks (Yang, Long & Zhou, 2010).
Our results show furthermore that, within the four dimensions of psychological empowerment,
peer leaders also made a clear distinction between empowering and disempowering practices in their
reporting sheets: empowering practices convey support, trust, and autonomy, while disempowering
practices referred to controlling and frustrating behavior. These forms of disempowering behavior
need to be distinguished from controlling behavior in general. The peer leaders criticize the – in their
view – unnecessary disempowering aspect of the interaction. Peer leaders do not criticize control
per se; instead, they regularly criticized their colleagues for not controlling through intervention and
effectively structuring the discussions. These findings seem to confirm some assertions that are put
forward by e.g. Uhl-Bien et al (2017), and their work on enabling leadership, as well as those of
Rønningstad (2019), which stress the fact that leadership, especially in the face of complexity, includes,
rather than negates operational aspects, such as specific forms of standardization and control. What
differentiates empowering leaders from more traditional, bureaucratically oriented, leaders, however,
is their ability to effectively gauge the creative tension between operational and entrepreneurial
systems, which enables people to respond to complex issues. In reference to the four dimensions of
psychological empowerment, we see that leaders in our study who did this well, could indeed exhibit
features of firm guidance at the right times, but always in connection with the essential values of the
organization (dimension of meaning), e.g. “keeping every child safe.”
The results also show that empowering leadership is not always about stimulating good and positive
feelings of the team members and thus can be distinguished from the unrealistic expectations of too
positive leadership (Alvesson & Einola, 2019). On the other hand, it is clear that empowering leader
ship is not as easy as it may seem, as the many disempowering practices convincingly show. These
findings are in line with the criticisms on empowering leadership of e.g. Argyris and Schon (1974) and
Stacey (2009), but are not related to the four dimensions of empowering leadership.
Moreover, in scrutinizing these findings, we see that some important theoretical contributions can
be made to the concept of empowering leadership. These inputs involve the following three themes
(see also Table 3).
Table 3. A typology of empowering and disempowering leadership practices.

Types of empowerment practices Types
of challenges Empowering practices Disempowering practices
Action Simple (ordered) e.g. providing access to- or making e.g. formulating decisions and dictating
(something is problems available support and guidance, giving them to family manager
observably done, (Morgan, ‘soft’ advice.
which either 2019)
promotes or Complex e.g. explaining the complexity of the e.g. asking controlling questions;
hinders . . . .) (unordered) problem, connecting discussion to interrupting family manager
problems purpose, methods principles and and doubting her professionalism;
(Fulop & goals, asking open questions, and rejecting/ignoring contribution
Mark, 2013) acknowledging acquired results;
Affective e.g. encouraging, reinforcing, showing e.g. rolling eyes or not making eye contact;
trust; making eye contact; creating making fun of somebody; hurrying
sort of togetherness; someone; giving up; being uninterested
or distracted
Non-Action Simple (ordered) e.g. not speaking or interrupting when e.g. not responding when team members
(something is problems not needed. Allowing the processes express that they are withdrawing from
observably NOT done, that already work to unfold on their doing their work according to
which either own. established processes (e.g. in the face of
promotes or resistance, see page. 15)
hinders . . .) Complex e.g. not being afraid to wait for e.g. not intervening when other team
(unordered) a solution/answer to arise from the members ask questions that prevent
problems team. Even when it takes time. deeper reflection, and keep the
discussion superficial. Not continuing
with a question about core issue (e.g.
safety line).
Cognitive Affective e.g. not interrupting; not being reactive, e.g. not addressing defensive behavior; not
trusting family managers; looking intervening when purpose/ value of an
involved but not speaking organization is violated
1. Action and non-action in (dis)empowering leadership practice

Among the (dis-)empowering practices that were observed by peer-leaders, we can distinguish
between specific observable actions. The peer-leaders involved in this study, besides actions or
interventions that were noticeably done, also signified events in which it happened that the team
leader omitted or refrained from an action. It is important to note that these non-actions (otherwise
also referred to as “negative action”1), share a causal role with a certain outcome (e.g. the empower
ment of team members), and are therefore singled out as important, rather than other actions that
happen at the same time. For instance, when a peer leader reflected on a team leader’s ability to
“refrain from judgment,” she was not commenting on what the peer leader may positively have been
doing instead (the positive action in this specific case perhaps being that he or she was tapping on the
floor with his or her feet). It is in this case only the negative action of not doing something (i.e. not
judging) that is of importance here in relation to the potential outcome of empowerment.
It is an important distinction because empowering leadership, with its emphasis on distributing power
and encouraging autonomy (Frischer, 2006), can be easily confused with laissez-faire leadership (in
which leaders are quite passive in their leading). It is challenging to find a functional balance (or “thin
line”) between distributing power and complete laissez-faire (Wong & Giessner, 2018). Leaders are often
confronted with the question of when, and whether, they should intervene or, as laissez-faire leaders
would willfully decide not to act (Murari, 2013). As evident from our study, peer leaders were often
critical of leaders “abandoning” their team, or showing a lack of appropriate intervention, especially if
critical issues were not addressed by the team (e.g. the safety of the child). The opposite is also true, where
peers criticized leaders for intervening or stepping in (e.g. referring to sudden interruptions in which the
problem-solving process is suddenly taken over by the leader, and/or solutions are dictated). Peer leaders
1
In ontology, negative actions are understood as observable events, which are token-identical to which consist of an agent doing
something, rather than not doing something. This is because, as agents, we can manifest our intentions just as much by not doing,
as well as by doing them (e.g. in the activity of delaying or refraining from judgement’).
had clear ideas of what, according to them, were empowering non-actions and what were disempowering
non-actions (with high inter-rater consistency). One of the most mentioned disempowering non-actions
was the lack of intervention when a team member asked controlling and diminishing questions or is in
other ways disempowering to other team members, thereby ruining the open atmosphere needed for
a creative learning process (Yost, Vogel, & Liang, 2009).
2. First and second order learning problems

From our study it seems that another factor also plays a significant role in empowering leadership,
which involves the type of problem – first- or second-order learning problems – that is presented to
the team. First-order problems are simple problems, which can be solved relatively easily with the help
of extra information or a particular guideline, and require more straightforward managing and
responses from leaders (Morgan, 2019). Second-order problems are more complex, and require deeper
questioning and discussion (Fulop & Mark, 2013). An issue is that organizational leaders sometimes
omit dealing with the root of second-order problems by treating them as first-order problems.
Kerman, Freundlich, Lee, and Brenner (2012) for instance studied how child welfare organizations
can change to a more learning organization. They found that employees became frustrated and
impeded the change process if it was unclear to them whether first-order or second-order learning
was needed in a certain situation (Kerman et al., 2012). This can also be seen in the practices of this
study’s leaders who, at certain moments, failed to recognize they were dealing with a second-order
problem, and closed down any opportunity for further discussion by applying a checklist approach.
Leaders who treat a complex problem as a simple problem behave at that moment disempowering
because it, first, reduces the possibilities for learning, and also reduces the team’s autonomy to steer
their own problem-solving process. Snowden and Boone (2007) have explored the domains of
problems that leaders encounter, and divided them along the lines of ordered (where cause and effect
are easily discernible) and unordered (complex and chaotic) problems, urging leaders to act appro
priately according to each situation. Interestingly, Snowden and Boone (2007) also assert that leaders
are often incapable of switching their leadership styles in line with their context, and are stuck in a style
that only fits ordered or unordered problems.
Our study also shows that leaders can respond in ways that are empowering and disempowering, in
both simple and complex problem contexts. Empowering practices (see Table 3) involves, in the
context of simple problems, leaders providing or making available sound processes and support team
members with “soft” advice (disempowering would be to command or dictate decisions to team
members). Empowering practices, in the context of complex problems, involves leaders opening the
space for deeper reflection on the meaning of the work, acknowledging both the complexity of the
problem, and people’s ability to solve the problem, and asking open questions that help team members
reflect. Indeed, when team leaders focused on the right learning approach in relation to the problem at
hand, team leaders could be very empowering and were complimented by their peers. Disempowering
practices involve controlling questioning behavior, and rejecting contributions. Team leaders often
struggled to acknowledge that they were dealing with a complex issue, to be calm in the midst of
potential threats, and to allow the team to discuss the case openly. The latter was also described by
Maitlis and Sonenshein (2010) who explained that panic and fear can induce leaders to narrow their
attention to new cues and open sensemaking and prompt them to react in more traditionally,
dominant ways.
3. Cognitive and affective dimensions of (dis)empowering leadership practices

The results show that in the empowering practices, next to cognitive dimensions, also social, com
municative and emotional dimensions play an important role. Although this is evident from the
leadership literature, the role of negative emotions of leaders is under-emphasized in empowering
leadership literature generally (Jordan & Troth, 2004; McCleskey, 2014) and in organizational change
studies in child welfare organizations particularly (Claiborne, Auerbach, Zeitlin, & Lawrence, 2015). In
our study, peer leaders made various comments on affects (the emotions and moods) taking place in
the interaction between the team leader and family manager, indicating how they influenced the team
members both positively and negatively. These affects could be tracked relatively easily by observing
the videos, noting and analyzing facial expressions and body language. Although often ignored in the
literature on psychological empowerment, these antecedents of affective trust (including mostly
aspects of non-verbal communication) were often described by peer-leaders as important (dis-)
empowering practices. In empowering practices, leaders were seen to show trust (e.g. a calm demea
nor, making eye contact with team members) while in disempowering practices, leaders were
perceived to show a lack of interest (e.g. avoiding eye-contact, looking distracted or even rolling
their eyes in response to team members’ remarks). It is important to realize the significant positive and
negative impact emotions continue to have on the behavior of leaders, as our study demonstrates also.
Newcombe and Ashkanasy (2002), for instance, found that leaders who gave positive feedback in
words but accommodated with negative facial expressions were rated lower, than those who gave
negative feedback and accommodated with negative expressions. Common triggers for disempower
ing practices to build affective trust identified in this study were e.g. high-risk cases (involving, for
instance, abused children in unsafe families), being unable to deal with dominant family managers or
other team members, frustration about the difficulty of realizing second-order learning, time pressure,
and fear of inadequate actions by family managers. Still, rather than deeming emotions as harmful and
destructive in leadership practice, we would assert that feelings are a form of pre-action (see e.g.
Goleman, 2011; Goleman et al., 2013; Hochschild & Hochschild, 1983), and therefore a powerful tool
for direct action. Emotional intelligence, when nurtured in leaders, can stimulate better relationships,
loyalty, trust, and resilience in team members (Fambrough & Kaye Hart, 2008; Goleman, 2011;
Goleman et al., 2013).
Based on the above results showing the influence of leadership challenges on their daily practices,
we hypothesize that eight different types of empowering leadership practices seem to emerge (Table 3).
For each type of interaction, the table provides illustrative examples. We suggest that these integrated
findings facilitate a better understanding of empowering leadership, and clearly show that empowering
leadership is a much more multifaceted and complex phenomenon than that has been hitherto
recognized.2 These leadership practices should be further developed to be included in training
programs for middle- and top-level leaders, particularly those who are working in complex environ
ments, such as social and child welfare services. Particularly learning to reflect on practices as a way to
deconstruct and analyze under which circumstances leaders are required to intervene, versus trust, as
well as dealing with some of the other mentioned tensions, will help to support adaptive leadership
(Fook & Gardner, 2007). Video-reflection as a tool can be instrumental in such training programs.
Critical to further study, then, is the question of how individual leaders can become more inclined
to change the balance toward empowering behaviors? We suggest (together with, e.g., (Einarsen,
Aasland, & Skogstad, 2007; Goleman, 2011; Goleman et al., 2013) that te key leverage point for change
is first and foremost increased awareness and self-reflection. Increased awareness of team leaders
about their disempowering behaviors is crucial and likely to be realized when leaders can reflect on
their own practices as captured on video, especially when complemented with constructive feedback
from peers. Pittman (2020) also based on Zak (2018) suggests that understanding psychological and
physiological responses of employees and themselves help team leaders build “healthy, resilient
organizations that excel in performance and thrive during adversity” (p.136). We see that abusive
practices (Visser & Van der Togt, 2016) may come from empowering leaders who are under stress/
duress (Harms, Credé, Tynan, Leon, & Jeung, 2017), and peer reflection can help make them conscious
2
Empowerment has predominantly been measured in surveys that tend to be one-sided and neglected examining disempowering
practices (see (Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005; Amundsen & Martinsen, 2014).
of the circumstances under which they may inadvertently act in disempowering ways. As Raelin (2011)
suggests: “So, rather than sending managers away to learn their leadership, we need to bring leadership
development back into the group where the lessons of experience can be truly accessed” (p.204).
Strengths and limitations

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that empowering and disempowering practices of
leaders were systematically identified in day-to-day practices through a peer video reflection approach
allowing us to shed new light on the phenomenon of empowering leadership. Peer team leaders were
familiar with each other, and with the work of their colleagues, allowing them to make perceptive
comments. To a large extent, the peers were co-researchers in this study, and not merely participants.
A potential limitation of this study is that videos capture snapshots or “slices of reality” (Toraldo,
Islam, & Mangia, 2018) in a process of transformation. This study does not show how over time the
balance between empowering practices and disempowering practices has changed. It can be hypothe
sized that due to a continuous focus on reflective practices the balance will change to the positive side,
but that disempowering practices will remain due to the difficulty of tasks and with self-regulation.
Future studies should ideally take a longitudinal approach to evaluating how empowering practice
evolve over time. Moreover, the presence of the camera might have influenced the behavior of the
team members. Blomberg, Giacomi, Mosher, and Swenton-Wall (2017) argues that the presence of
a camera does influence behavior to some degree, but that in most cases the camera quickly becomes
part of the background. This was observed in this study as well.
Another limitation was the fact that our research design did not allow for professionals to reflect on
the team meeting practices with reference to empowerment. Ideally, their reflections would have been
considered in the form of in-depth interviews. This was, however, beyond the scope of the current
study. Still, we feel confident that both the feedback of the peer leaders, and the comprehensive
analysis of video material by the primary researchers led to important as well as valid inputs for the
field of leadership practice. The validity of this action-oriented research was also enhanced by the fact
that two primary researchers were consistently involved in the field of CYPSA and its transformation
for 5 years. As they were deeply emerged in the ongoing developments and could observe team leaders
in action over a longer period of time than the duration of this study, the data material could be
verified and understood in the same frame of in-depth understanding. To avoid bias, the rest of the
team was involved in co-analyzing the data, before the conclusions were drawn up.
6 Conclusion
In this study, we set out to understand how leaders, in the context of organizational transformation in
a human service organization, can support a culture that is oriented toward reflective learning, rather
than following protocols. Empowering leadership, as distilled from the theoretical discussion, was seen
as fundamental to stimulating shared decision-making among team members, and context-
appropriate solutions to emerging problems. The robust methodology, including video-reflection
with peer-leaders, helped us abstract a wide variety of leadership skills that are displayed in the
daily practices of team-managers, and to see which of these skills were considered supportive, and
which were not, highlighting empowering and disempowering practices. The findings bring more
nuance to the discussion on empowering leadership in human service organizations, in which leader
ship tends to be talked about as concerning personality traits, rather than practices. We could then also
distinguish contexts that involved first-order learning problems, as well as second-order learning
problems, and how these require distinct responses from empowering team-leaders. This, again,
brings more nuance to the discussion on empowering leadership as we unpacked the diversity of
context-specific tools leaders require to manage a team effectively. Inherent to this, and an important
additional contribution, is the ability for managers also not to act (e.g. wait, delay, not interrupt, etc.),
when this is required. Essentially, this study shows that more knowledge is required about how leaders
can recognize these specific situations more effectively. The findings of this study give emphasis to the
need for more research on effective leadership skills in managers, and how to stimulate these, as these
skills provide the glue that holds people and teams together when facing complexity. Finally, we
suggest that video-learning is a helpful methodology for future research on leadership, as most of the
people’s (intangible) reality is better expressed in their day-to-day practices than in their accounts of
the practice.
Practice points
(1) The study confirms that adopting strategies that empower staff to take complex context-
appropriate decisions is indeed difficult for which there is no quick fix.
(2) Every leader in our study showed both empowering and disempowering behaviors.
Disempowering practices often occurred where there was urgency, stress, and lack of trust.
(3) The developed taxonomy of (dis)empowering practices, with concrete examples, is conducive
to recognizing and understanding empowering leadership, which can assist in enhancing
reflexive capacity among leaders.
(4) Deciding whether to intervene or not, assessing the complexity of a problem and taking careful
consideration of how and when to invest in affection and trust are essential antecedents for
empowering leadership.
(5) We advise the use of video reflection not only as an analytical tool for research but also as a tool
for training on leadership development – enhanced reflexivity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit
sectors.
ORCID
Arnout E. Bunders http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0813-3687
Jacqueline E. W. Broerse http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8478-3422
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Leadership for Empowerment: Analyzing Leadership Practices in a

Empowering leadership as a concept

Academic debates around empowering leadership

Table 1. Operationalization empowerment practices.

Table 3. A typology of empowering and disempowering leadership practices.

1. Action and non-action in (dis)empowering leadership practice

2. First and second order learning problems

3. Cognitive and affective dimensions of (dis)empowering leadership practices

Strengths and limitations

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