What the follower should do in order to be empowered
Employees empowerment can be achieved where the organizational culture aims at generating a strong and healthy communication climate and where M&E processes are aimed at fostering organizational development and learning.
Empowerment can be achieved only if both the "giver of power" (i.e. the higher hierarchical level and the "receiver of power" (i.e. the lower hierarchical level) agree upon this process and both assume upon themselves the consequential responsibilities.
Just as a philosophy of empowerment assumes that leaders behave in certain ways (see what the leader should do in order to empower), it also implies that employees will behave in a self-empowering way.
In particular, the literature stresses that followers develop skills in and practice:
open communication;
working in teams;
listening to the voice of wisdom;
having tolerance with ambiguity;
encouraging oneself;
accepting responsibility.
Empowerment is liberation of the creative human potential. Its opposite is a state of fear that causes people to withhold their ideas and true opinions. To become self-empowered, therefore, individuals must be willing to put their thoughts out on the table, to expose them to scrutiny. They must learn how to own up to their own ideas, assumptions, biases and fears and help others to do the same. Von Krogh, Ichijo, and Nonaka (2000) state that organizational cultures that promote creativity are characterized by "direct interaction and a policy of openness without hiding what one knows, creating space . . . necessary for creativity and spontaneity". The point here, however, is that this direct interaction and openness cannot be coerced. It is a choice that must be made by the empowered.
This kind of open communication is directly linked to organizational learning because it creates a climate where learning can take place.
The ability and willingness to work as a team is another essential trait of empowered employees (Landes, 1994). It is not just self-empowerment; it is the collective empowerment that comes by learning to work together. Empowerment is not to be mistaken for a form of individual power-grabbing, where the increase in the power of one signifies the decrease in the power of others. Rather, is it a process of discovering and maximizing the gifts of each individual and coordinating them so that the experience of empowerment increases for the entire team. (see guidelines: How to manage Teams ; How to recognise if Team Building is succesfull)
The idea here is that, if employees can no longer depend on superiors for the wisdom to make decisions and must accept the responsibility for making their own decisions, then where can they turn for that wisdom? They must themselves learn to listen to wisdom. This may include learning skills for thinking about the future, recognizing trends and anticipating events or outcomes that may affect the organization (Bell, 2003, p. 70). Daft (2004) makes a distinction between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, defining wisdom as "the subjection of knowledge to universal spiritual principles and its consequent use in real situations" (p. 297). An empowered employee must move beyond data, information, and even knowledge. He or she must listen to wisdom's voice to make appropriate decisions for which they will accept accountability. This is a much higher level of involvement than the old boss-dependent paradigm that left the employee's mind and heart at the door and treated them like machines. In an empowering organization, employees think and pursue wisdom regarding the success of the organization just as much as does top management. Wisdom is not found in the closed sessions of some "planning committee;" it "shouts in the street, [and] lifts her voice in the square" (Proverbs 1:20, NASB). In other words, it is available through life and its experiences and, for a organization, through the interaction of employees with beneficiaries, suppliers, and others with whom the employee directly interfaces.
Empowerment requires a willingness to give up the protection and safety of dependency (Field, 1997, p. 153). Employees, however, often resist empowerment because it feels uncomfortably ambiguous. They may be used to having not only outcomes but also means and ways clearly defined for them by others.
Empowered employees have to think for themselves and often engage in what Scott and Bruce (1994) refer to as bisociative thinking, the use of intuition and thinking across the boundaries of different departments and disciplines to find solutions to problems related to their mandate. Under the pressure of ambiguity, employees often run to the leader for relief; they want resolution and closure as soon as possible. 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 for resolution by telling them what to do. In so doing, they have disempowered the employee and re-established dependence on themselves. So, a key skill to teach employees is tolerance for ambiguity. As author Mary Gordon puts it, "One of the most important parts of the creative process is to learn to be patient, to learn how to sit in the mess" (Cited in Patrick, 2006, p. 31).
Empowered employees know how to encourage themselves; the source of their confidence is not in others but in their own inner sense of spiritual resilience (Chandler, 2005, pp. 156-157). Handy (1990) refers to people who are skilled at "negative capability, . . . the capacity to live with mistakes and failures without being downhearted or dismayed" (p. 68). Employees who live with constant self-doubt will be unlikely to accept the challenge of empowerment because, for them, more responsibility only means more opportunity for failure which they avoid at all costs because failure threatens their fragile sense of self-worth (Handy, 1990, p. 74). This is where empowerment moves away from management principles and organizational structures and becomes very personal. The only way empowerment can be a reality is for individual employees to develop and maintain an emotional and spiritual health that enables them to accept the higher levels of responsibility inherent in an empowering context.
Above all, empowered employees accept responsibility for outcomes. "Empowerment . . . extends beyond delegation to encompass true ownership and hence the true burden of responsibility" (Jamali, Khoury, & Sahyoun, 2006, p. 339). They recognize that the autonomy side of the empowerment equation must be balanced by responsibility (Keidel, 1995, pp. 17-18). They know that they cannot blame upper management, suppliers, other department heads, or anyone else for the failure of their area of responsibility to produce desired results. They accept responsibility and this enables them to learn from their failures. This also means that empowered employees are willing to have their performance measured and out in the open. They are willing to subject their performance to objective, written, assessments because they see these as opportunities for feedback and improvement.
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Just as a philosophy of empowerment assumes that leaders behave in certain ways (see what the leader should do in order to empower), it also implies that employees will behave in a self-empowering way and it has it also has implications for organizational structures. (see how the organization should be structured in order to empower its employees).
Empowerment is a necessary element of organizational learning. It is also a prerequisite to an organization becoming a learning organization. learning organization"
A basic
assumption of this manual is that the best managerial style for the
development aid organization is designing and managing itself and its