In a world of global competition, continuous change, and high quality customer focused effort, empowerment has become almost sacred. What then is empowerment?

 

Empowerment is the process of enabling an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It enables employees to use their skills and abilities to benefit both their organization and themselves.

 

At the organizational level, employee empowerment is sharing with front-line employees information about an organization's performance, information about rewards based on the organization's performance, knowledge that enables employees to understand and contribute to organizational performance and giving employees the power to make decisions that influence organizational direction and performance.

 

Four general characteristics have been found to reflect empowered people:

 

1.Empowered people have a sense of meaning – this means that people feel their work is important to them; they care about what they are doing, they have a strong sense of personal meaning.

2.Empowered people have a sense of self-determination – this means that people are free to choose how to do their work, they have a sense of having a choice in initiating and regulating actions.

3.Empowered people have a sense of competence – this means that people are confident about their ability to do their work well, they know they can perform, they are innovative, not afraid to try new things or to create more innovative ways of doing things,

4.Finally, empowered people have a sense of impact- this means that people believe they can have influence on their work unit or department, others listen to their ideas

 

To be empowered, people must “feel” empowered. It is not something that management does to employees, but rather a mind set that employees have about their role in the organization. While management can create a context that is more empowering, employees must choose to be empowered. They must see themselves as having freedom and discretion, have a feeling of personal connection to the organization, confident about their abilities, and are able to have an impact on the system in which they are in. Management cannot mandate these things on employees, instead, employees must experience these characteristics as authentic.

 

As Ken Blanchard has said, “Empowerment is not giving people power, people already have plenty of power, in the wealth of their knowledge and motivation to do their jobs magnificently. We define empowerment as letting this power out.”

 

Let us pause for a moment and ponder upon these words. Are we empowered? If yes... then let us continue to act as empowered people. If not... then, to day is the day to begin to be empowered, for empowered people are empowering people.

 

 

Head, Guidance Center

Dec. 5, 2011 Flag Ceremony

 

 

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