Are you empowered?
Do you even know what that means?
Do you empower your team?
Do you even know what that means?
Yes, this is another of my rants about buzzwords. Because, as the third of those three linked articles says, buzzwords are once-meaningful words that have, through overuse and over-hype, become functionally meaningless.
Of course, I’m not sure “empowered” ever had a clear meaning in the workplace.
To offer a rather ridiculous example, I can empower – let’s say – you, to make changes to my website.
But if I don’t make sure you’ve got the necessary training and skills in website maintenance and design, and if I haven’t made it clear what I want you to do – well, that “empowerment” is meaningless.
Clearly that’s an absurd example – but it stands as an example of the ways this particular buzzword sends leaders down unfortunate paths.
So let’s back up here, and take a look at what we’re really trying to do.
We want our people to learn, grow, develop new skills, and take on increasingly challenging tasks and projects. Great.
But we don’t do that by tossing those tasks and projects over the wall at them, telling them they’re “empowered” to get them done. That’s setting them up for failure.
Empowerment can be a real thing – but only if we understand the full scope of what it means to delegate and empower someone. Delegation is about handing off a task. Empowerment is about making sure they have what they need.
That includes:
- The necessary skills, or appropriate training if they need to learn new skills;
- The necessary resources, including time, materials, tools, and other support;
- The relevant authority to do what needs to be done – which includes guidelines around what types of decisions they can make. (Classic example: customer support reps who are not empowered to actually help. We all know how maddening that is for us as customers, and I have no doubt at all that it’s even more frustrating for the support rep who can’t stray from their script or make the obvious decisions necessary to provide real help!)
As leaders, it’s our responsibility to challenge our people learn and grow. Yes, that does include empowering them – but we need to be clear on what that actually means within the situation at hand.
How about empowering yourself?
Do you have the skills you need to achieve what you want to achieve?
If not, what are you waiting for? Go get them!