Employee empowerment, a phrase that is firmly in the current leadership lexicon. It’s lame and the irony in the phrase brings a smile, or maybe it’s more of a smirk.
“To prepare and free the worker to perform is the job of management,” according to Dr. Peter Drucker who we know as The Father of Modern Management.
Drucker also said, “Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.” This isn’t new. It preceded the employee empowerment phrase by decades.
Still we see a lot of it and in some businesses it is the dominant culture.
Employee empowerment is not the act of those in power bestowing power on underlings as if through a touch of the sword on the shoulder of a kneeling knight.
There is a dirty little secret about employee empowerment and it is far less noble.
Employee empowerment is a process of leaders learning to stop doing things that get in the way of the growth and performance of people they lead and start doing things that help people grow in their capability and make it easier for them to perform important work.
When you get good at it your job as a leader gets easier and more satisfying. Effective leaders are made not born.
I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.