11
Using Empowerment to Motivate People to Engage in Effective Self- and Shared Leadership
JAY A. CONGER AND CRAIG L. PEARCE
In recent decades there has been a steady increase in interest in empowerment as a motivational tool in both the academic (e.g. Conger and Kanungo, 1988; Houghton, Neck, and Manz, 2003; Liden and Arad, 1995; Mills and Ungson, 2003; Pearce and Sims, 2002; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990) and practitioner literature (e.g. Block, 1987; Conger, 1989; Manz and Sims, 1989, 2001; Pearce, 2008). The essence of empowerment, at the individual level of analysis, entails granting autonomy to individuals to perform tasks, while simultaneously enhancing their task-related self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986, 1997; see also Chapter 10). Naturally, empowerment needs to be founded on appropriately set goals (Locke and Latham, 1990; see also Chapter 9).
At the individual level of analysis, empowerment is ultimately experienced when followers engage in effective self-leadership (Manz and Sims, 1980; Houghton et al., 2003), where self-leadership is defined as “a process through which people influence themselves to achieve the self-direction and self-motivation needed to perform” (Houghton et al., 2003, p. 126). The empirical evidence on empowerment suggests that it has a powerful positive influence on individuals (e.g. Liden, Wayne, and Sparrowe, 2000; Spreitzer, 1995; Spreitzer, Kizilos, and Nason, 1994).
As we move to the group level of analysis, empowerment is experienced when the group effectively practices shared leadership (Pearce and Conger, 2003; Pearce, 2004, 2008), where shared leadership is defined as “a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both” (Pearce and Conger, 2003, p. 1). Here again, the empirical evidence is fairly robust regarding the positive influence of empowerment (e.g. Ensley, Hmieleski, and Pearce, 2006; Pearce and Sims, 2002; Pearce, Yoo, and Alavi, 2004). In the next section we explore the complex process of empowerment.
The actual process of empowerment can be viewed along six stages that include the psychological state of an empowering experience, its antecedent conditions, and its behavioral consequences. The six stages are shown in Figure 11.1. The first stage is the diagnosis of conditions within individuals and their organizations that are responsible for feelings of disempowerment. Following the diagnosis of disempowerment, managers may employ certain strategies indicated in stage 2. The employment of these strategies is aimed at not only removing some of the conditions responsible for disempowerment; but also (and more importantly) at providing subordinates with empowerment information for stage 3. Individuals then interpret this information in stage 4 according to personal styles of assessment. If these styles assess the information as empowering, then an individual will feel empowered and the behavioral effects of empowerment will be observed in stage 5, where individuals become effective self-leaders (Manz and Sims, 1980). Beyond these five stages for the individual, empowerment can spread among group members and lead to group empowerment, whose result is the display of shared leadership in stage 6 (Bligh, Pearce, and Kohles, 2006).
Stage 1
Starting with the first stage (the context), there are specific individual and contextual factors that contribute to the lowering of empowerment feelings among organizational members (Block, 1987; Conger, 1989; Kanter, 1979, 1983; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). From the standpoint of organizational factors, Table 11.1 identifies some of the principal factors that influence and hinder empowerment outcomes. These are organized into four categories: (a) organizational, (b) hierarchical leader behavior, (c) reward systems, and (d) job design.
FIGURE 11.1 Stages of the empowerment process
Source: Adapted from Conger and Kanungo (1988)
Table 11.1 Context factors leading to potential lowering of empowerment beliefs
Source: Adapted from Conger and Kanungo (1988).
Organizational factors
• Significant organizational changes/transitions
• Competitive pressures
• Impersonal bureaucratic climate
• Poor communications/network-forming systems
• Highly centralized organizational resources
Hierarchical leader behavior
• Directive (high control)
• Aversive (emphasis on fear)
• Negativism (emphasis on failure)
• Lack of reason for actions/consequences
Reward systems
• Non-contingency (arbitrary reward allocation)
• Low incentive value of rewards
• Lack of competence-based rewards
• Lack of innovation-based rewards
Job design
• Lack of role clarity
• Lack of training and technical support
• Unrealistic goals
• Lack of appropriate authority/discretion
• Low task variety
• Limited participation in programs, meetings, decisions that have a direct impact on job performance
• Lack of appropriate/necessary resources
• Lack of network-forming opportunities
• Highly established work routines
• High rule structure
• Low advancement opportunities
• Lack of meaningful goals/tasks
• Limited contact with senior management
For instance, organizations with high levels of formalization and impersonal control systems can stifle member initiative (Chapter 22), meaningfulness, and a sense of responsibility. Aversive and directive hierarchical leader behavior can strip control and discretion from organizational members (Pearce, Sims, Cox, Ball, Schnell, Smith, and Trevino, 2003). Rewards may not be allocated on the basis of members’ competence or innovative behavior, but rather on their blind compliance with formalized control from the top. When organizations do not provide rewards that are valued by members, and when the rewards are not based on member competence, initiative, and innovative job behavior, employees’ sense of disempowerment increases (Sims, 1977; Szilagyi, 1980; see Chapter 12). Reward systems that emphasize innovative/unusual performance and high incentive values have a significant probability of fostering a greater sense of empowerment, while those that do not tend to disempower (Kanter, 1979; Kanungo, 1987; Lawler, 1971, 1977). Finally, when jobs provide very little challenge and meaning, and when they involve role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload, employees can feel a crippling sense of disempowerment (Lawler and Finegold, 2000; see Chapter 6).
Stage 2
To address such conditions identified in stage 1, there are a number of management practices that can restore or heighten a sense of empowerment (stage 2). For example, at the organizational level, company policies and cultures can enhance empowerment by emphasizing self-determination, internal collaboration (Chapter 18), high performance standards, non-discrimination, and meritocracy. In addition, organizations that provide multiple sources of loosely committed resources at decentralized or local levels, that structure open communications systems (see Chapter 23), and that create extensive network-forming devices are more likely to be empowering (Kanter, 1983). Jobs that provide task variety, personal relevance, appropriate autonomy and control, low levels of established routines and rules, and high advancement prospects (Chapter 6) are more likely to empower subordinates (Block, 1987; Hackman, Oldham, Janson, and Purdy, 1975; Kanter, 1979; Oldham, 1976; Strauss, 1977).
The above practices can be viewed from the different perspectives of either formal/ organizational mechanisms or individual/informal techniques. Organizations require both types to effectively instill a context of empowerment. For example, when organizations engage in participation programs, they establish formal systems that empower organizational members through the sharing of information (Chapter 24), formal power, and authority.
In order for this sharing of power to be effective at the individual level, however, employees must perceive it as increasing their sense of self-efficacy - which is accomplished largely through the more informal practices of individual managers and in their one-on-one interactions with subordinates and co-workers. Empowerment initiatives, which rely on a singular approach such as the delegation of decision making, usually prove to be ineffective. Rather, initiatives must be supported on multiple levels and by multiple interventions. In the ideal case, they would involve a highly supportive organizational culture; training and developmental experiences that heighten one’s sense of competence; involvement in goal setting or, especially, in the means to achieve goals, job designs that are highly meaningful to employees; the selection of managers open to empowerment approaches and proactive in their use; and the selection and promotion of employees whose interpretative schemes are biased towards constructive and enabling self-assessments (Liden and Arad, 1995; Spreitzer et al., 1994).
Stage 3
In order to be effective, the empowerment practices outlined above must directly provide information to employees about personal efficacy, a sense of choice, meaningfulness of the task, and impact (stage 3). For example, on the dimension of competence or self-efficacy, Bandura (1986, 1997) has identified four sources of such information (see Chapter 10): enactive attainment, vicarious experience, persuasion/feedback, and emotional arousal state. Personal efficacy gained through enactive attainment refers to an individual’s authentic mastery experience directly related to the job. For example, a manager can allocate or structure tasks that provide an empowering experience for an individual. When subordinates are trained to perform complex tasks or are given more responsibility in their jobs, they have the opportunity to increase their efficacy and to receive positive feedback. Initial success experiences (through successively moderate increments in task complexity and responsibility along with training to acquire new skills) can make one feel more capable and, therefore, more empowered.
Empowerment information can also come from the vicarious experiences of observing similar others, i.e. co-workers, who perform successfully on the job. Very often, a manager’s exemplary behaviors empower subordinates to believe that they can behave in a like manner or that they can at least achieve some improvement in their performance. In addition, words of encouragement, performance feedback, mentoring advice, and other forms of social persuasion are often used by leaders, managers, and group members to raise efficacy and provide empowerment information to subordinates and co-workers (Conger, 1989; Pearce and Sims, 2002). For instance, leaders may use annual meetings to provide empowering information in the form of praise and encouragement (Chapter 13) for exceptional performance. Through positive performance evaluations, managers may similarly foster an empowered state. Naturally, this does not imply that one should raise the performance evaluations of direct reports irrespective of their actual performance. Falseness breeds distrust (Chapter 21).
Leadership practices which have been identified as empowering include: (a) expressing confidence in subordinates accompanied by high performance expectations (Burke, 1986; Conger, 1989; House, 1977; Neilsen, 1986); (b) fostering opportunities for subordinates to participate in decision making and goal setting or to create their own jobs (Block, 1987; Burke, 1986; Conger, 1989; Erez and Arad, 1986; House, 1977; Kanter, 1979; Neilsen, 1986; Strauss, 1977); (c) providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints and encouraging independent action (Block, 1987; Kanter, 1979; Ensley et al., 2006; Pearce and Sims, 2002); (d) setting inspirational and/or meaningful goals (Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Block, 1987; Conger and Kanungo, 1998; McClelland, 1975; Tichy and Devanna, 1986); and (e) encouraging self-development and opportunity thinking (Manz and Sims, 1989, 2001; Houghton et al., 2003).
Finally, personal competence expectations are affected by one’s emotional arousal state. Individuals are more likely to feel competent when they are not experiencing strong negative arousal. Emotional arousal states that result from dysfunctional levels of stress, fear, anxiety, depression, and so forth, both on and off the job, can lower self-efficacy expectations (see Chapter 8 for a discussion of emotional control). Therefore empowerment strategies that provide information in the form of emotional support for subordinates and that create a supportive and trusting group atmosphere (Neilsen, 1986) can be effective in strengthening self-efficacy beliefs. For example, employees’ stress, anxiety, and tension on the job can be reduced by managers clearly defining employees’ roles, reducing information overload, and offering them technical assistance to accomplish job tasks. Similarly, the impact of depression and self-doubt on subordinates as a result of failures on the job could be lessened by their supervisor attributing such failures to external and unstable factors (assuming there are valid reasons for doing so) such as task difficulty, inadequate support systems, and so forth, rather than attributing it to the individual’s efforts or abilities (Weiner, 1985). Employees, of course, must learn to take personal responsibility for what they can control.
Stages 4-6
As a result of receiving the above forms of information, employees will interpret this information according to their individual styles of assessment in stage 4. In other words, personal interpretations will determine whether the information is seen as empowering or not. Depressed individuals, for example, are less likely to see successes as indicative of their own competence (Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale, 1978). Others may have irrational standards of perfection that in turn reduce perceptions of personal empowerment. For these very reasons, careful selection of employees is necessary (see Chapters 1-3). In the next section where we discuss exceptions, we will describe this assessment process in greater depth since it directly affects the success of any empowerment initiative.
If information is indeed interpreted as empowering, then the individual will enter a state of psychological empowerment - and the behavioral effects of empowerment will be noticed in stage five - followers becoming effective self-leaders (Manz and Sims, 1980). Beyond the behavioral effects of empowerment on individuals are the effects on groups. As individuals display effective self-leadership, the creation of shared leadership is the logical next step (stage 6): According to Bligh et al. (2006, p. 20), “the development of the self-leadership capabilities of team members sets into motion the meso-level processes that result in higher collective-levels of trust, potency, and commitment, which in turn facilitate the sustained sharing of mutual influence within the team that comprises shared leadership.”
We do not advocate empowerment as a new panacea for all organizational woes. Clearly, there are limitations regarding the efficacy of empowerment. As Locke (2003) has indicated, there are certain tasks which are the responsibility of the top leader. For example, Locke (2003, p. 278) noted that “core values must be pushed from the top down.” In fact, we believe there are situations in which empowerment is actually harmful (e.g. it could create anarchy with respect to core values). Further, empowerment could produce a state of overconfidence and, in turn, misjudgments on the part of followers. Because of a sense of false confidence in positive outcomes, employees might persist in efforts that, in actuality, are tactical or strategic errors.
Similarly, followers might overextend themselves through tasks which are largely impossible to accomplish. Leaders also might use such practices to garner commitment to tasks which are unethical. The positive personal effects that are felt by followers during empowering experiences may blind them to the leader’s own pragmatic (whatever works for me today), non-value-driven agenda or the nefarious manipulation of others. (Self-interest is a good thing if it is tied to proper values.)
There may also be situations where managers and organizations have little latitude to increase a sense of empowerment. For example, some jobs are highly mechanistic and routine. No matter what attempts are made at redesign, the jobs remain essentially the same (but see Chapter 6). Serious economic downturns or intense competitive situations may limit an organization’s ability to provide inspiring goals or appealing rewards other than simple job security. Trapped in autocratic cultures, managers wishing to empower may find themselves constrained by the larger system - their efforts at empowerment largely negated by the overriding culture or design elements of the organization.
Finally, there is the crucial issue of individual differences. For instance, some individuals may not have the requisite skills, ethical disposition, or conscientiousness necessary for empowerment. Further, during the process of empowerment, individuals are making subjective assessments about information and specific tasks. One individual may assess the same information quite differently from another. For example, some styles of assessment are properly self-enhancing and others are self-debilitating (Peale, 1954). As such, what might be an empowering experience for one individual may be a disempowering or non-empowering one for another. In the latter case, an individual may have set dysfunctional standards in the form of absolutistic “musts” concerning tasks. They may have the personal standard of “Perfection [outside of any rational context] is my goal on all dimensions of this task.” Such standards tend to reduce a person’s assessment of their success since anything short of perfection is seen as failure (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). Followers can also get trapped in these self-reinforcing cycles. Low personal assessments of their competence can lead to low initiative and inactivity which further reinforces perceptions of low success and a sense of low competence (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990).
Followers’ rational confidence in themselves clearly plays a central role. The motivation to undertake any new activity requires a measure of self-confidence on the part of individuals and a sense of potency (Bligh et al., 2006; Gully, Incalcaterra, Joshi, and Beaubien, 2002), or collective confidence, on the part of groups. If an individual has a strong foundation of belief in themselves, they are likely to be more optimistic than others when engaging in activities where information about task assessments are uncertain or cloudy (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). In addition, followers vary to the degree in which they invest themselves psychologically in tasks. Termed global meaningfulness, this concept describes an individual’s overall level of caring or commitment to tasks. People differ considerably along this dimension (Solomon and Patch, 1970). Individuals with low levels of global meaningfulness tend to experience alienation and are less likely to believe that new tasks will be meaningful (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990).
Given the above psychological dynamics, empowerment interventions must take into careful consideration the individuals, groups, and tasks involved. For some, their psychological outlook may prove a serious barrier to empowerment. Instead, it will be their capacity for self-reflection and learning that will determine, over the long term, whether they can at some point experience empowerment. At the same time, extended and persistent efforts at empowerment on the part of leaders will be required under such circumstances. With some individuals, there may be little that a manager or co-worker can, or should, do to empower them. This is especially true for followers who are in a psychologically unbalanced state. Outside professional help - for example, psychotherapy - may be the only possible option. For this very reason, careful selection and placement are critical factors.
To understand how empowerment works in the real world, we will look first at two positive examples and one negative/positive example. Each will be drawn from case studies of actions undertaken by senior organizational leaders to empower their workforces.
Richard Branson, the Virgin Group
As chief executive officer of the Virgin Group (a diversified British company encompassing entertainment/communications businesses and an airline), Richard Branson employs a variety of means to empower members of the company. At an organizational level, he preserves an entrepreneurial atmosphere through a Japanese-style keiretsu structure whereby the 500 companies under the Virgin Group operate quasi-independently but collaboratively in a global network (Kets de Vries and Dick, 1995). Once a company reaches a certain size, it is split into several organizations so that employees retain their sense of identity with their organization and a small-company, entrepreneurial atmosphere is preserved. At the individual level, each unit is led by a managing director who has considerable freedom to lead the business as they see fit and who has an equity position in the company. Decision making within the company is therefore decentralized. At the same time, senior managers have access to Branson for advice and guidance and can reach him 24 hours a day (Kets de Vries and Dick, 1995).
To further promote individual entrepreneurship within the company, employees with attractive ideas for new ventures are provided with seed capital and ownership. As a result, many of the Virgin companies are the product of employee ideas. A bridal service division called Virgin Bride, for example, was the idea of a Virgin Airways stewardess to whom Branson provided “venture capital.” The company’s new ventures allow Branson to stretch and develop employees by creating more opportunities for upward mobility and greater responsibility (Kets de Vries and Dick, 1995).
A central tenet of the company’s culture is the importance of employees. Branson’s maxim is staff first, customers second, and shareholders third, and Branson clearly keeps an eye on these results. As a result, he has created a culture which is egalitarian, non-bureaucratic, friendly, and family-like in atmosphere. The culture is one where people enjoy their work and have fun. It is also one which emphasizes proactivity. As Branson likes to say, “We can decide on something in the morning and have it in operation by the afternoon” (Kets de Vries and Dick, 1995). Taken together, the corporate culture, the company’s organizational design/reward systems, and Branson’s leadership style work effectively to create a cadre of empowered managers.
Jack Welch, General Electric
An executive or manager can put in place mechanisms to promote an empowering organizational culture that values free information sharing through participation and feedback systems, meaningful jobs through enrichment and goal setting programs, and rewards for competence and initiative. Jack Welch, former chief executive officer of General Electric, began his tenure as CEO by delayering the entire corporate bureaucracy. This sent an impressive signal throughout the organization. He later implemented a program entitled Work Out throughout the corporation. Work Out addressed roadblocks to employee empowerment at lower levels of the organization (Bower and Dial, 1993; Tichy and Sherman, 1993). The program created forums for employees to speak candidly about unnecessary work in their jobs and the management of their business units without fear of retribution from senior managers. Its second objective was to stimulate immediate action on the issues that surfaced. In two- to three-day sessions of 50 to 100 people, these forums openly critiqued the management practices and processes in an operation, with a strong focus specifically on identifying bureaucracy and unproductive behaviors that impeded employees’ effectiveness or efficacy. In essence, these forums tackled the barriers to empowerment. At the end of each session, the unit’s manager received direct feedback from employees on their findings and recommendations for action. In response, the rules stipulated that the manager had to “on the spot” accept or reject recommendations at the meeting or else appoint a team to investigate and provide solutions by an agreed-upon date. As the process has evolved, issues have since moved on to address more complicated and structural barriers such as cross-functional processes and departmental boundaries. At the end of its first two years, some 2000 Work Out sessions were conducted with over 90% of the suggestions acted upon (Bowers and Dial, 1993; Tichy and Sherman, 1993).
As noted earlier in this chapter, one of the organizational barriers to empowerment centers on supervisors’ needs to control. A principal objective behind Work Out was to redefine this relationship of control between a supervisor and their subordinates. Jack Welch explains: “Ultimately, we are talking about redefining the relationship between boss and subordinate. I want to get to the point where people challenge their bosses every day: ‘Why do you require me to do these wasteful things? . . . Trust me to do my job, and don’t waste all of my time trying to deal with you on the control issue’ ” (Tichy and Charan, 1989, p. 118). What is particularly interesting about this example is that it is an empowerment intervention instituted by an individual who demonstrates very directive and demanding leadership. Welch, for example, is known to routinely fire the bottom 5-10% of his senior managers for performance below his standards. He also sets well-defined goals for the organization. At the same time, he is a great believer in the ability of front-line individuals to address business problems and opportunities, that unnecessary bureaucracy is a major barrier to empowerment, and that individuals must have the freedom to choose the means necessary to reach set goals. It is therefore possible to have both strong leadership and empowerment.
To and from the depths of despair
Part A. This is the tale of an organization on the brink of disaster and of deep disempowerment. The company was known, for decades, as the standard bearer of quality in their industry. They were a commercial powerhouse in engineering and manufacturing. Under the rule of a dictatorial leader, however, the company systematically fell apart. This case is focused on just one of their facilities, located in the mid-Atlantic USA, which was an exemplar of the company’s woes. This facility had approximately one million square feet under roof and employed approximately 5000 individuals. Then corporate leadership decided that payroll expenses were too high and that workforce reductions were an effective solution. First, they outsourced one of the main product lines of the facility. As a result, the remaining workers felt deep discontent and disempowerment. A byproduct was the decline in quality - the very dimension that differentiated the organization in the marketplace. Soon to follow was a downturn in profitability. According to the general manager of the facility, “We began to hemorrhage.”
Following the outsourcing campaign, the corporate leaders decided that they wanted to break the union in order to lower wages and restore profitability. Accordingly, they transferred a third of the work to a different state, a right-to-work state. The union did not take that action lying down. They ultimately organized a union in the new location. According to the president of the union, “We took that action because the company had thrown down the gauntlet. And the fight began. The company was fighting their own workforce . . . and we won.”
Soon on the heels of the transfer of work to the right-to-work state were contract negotiations with the union, and the company feared a walk-out. This precipitated what came to be known as “the strike bank incident.” The strike bank incident involved the company ordering employees to work mandatory overtime in order to build up a reserve of parts to tide them through in the event of a strike. According to the general manager, “It was chaos. We had parts hanging from the ceiling. And of course quality went to hell, and we further alienated the workforce.”
The upshot of all of these draconian management actions were several bomb threats, which caused the evacuation of the massive facility and continued disruption to the operations. Meanwhile, the organization continued to tally up record losses. The facility hit rock bottom when they experienced a murder and a suicide attempt.
Part B. Organizations, just like people, often need to hit rock bottom before they change, and this is exactly what happened in this case. Following the last incident the general manager and the president of the union got together and decided to bring in an outside consulting firm to help them get back on course. The general manager stated, “We decided to focus on quality as a way to rebuild our relationship with employees. Nobody can argue with quality.” The president of the union was in complete agreement, stating, “We didn’t want to fight. We never wanted to fight. We wanted to have pride in our work.”
Thus they focused on workforce empowerment through several initiatives. It started with 20 hours of training for every single employee. The training focused on such things as problem solving, decision making, communication, and teamwork skills. The initial training was done by the consulting firm. From there on, the training was conducted by volunteers, from the shop floor.
Employees were formed into dozens of what they called Quality Action Teams. The teams were empowered to take on the quality problems facing the firm. Naturally, the transition was not easy for all of the managers (now called team leaders) involved. For example, the general manager recalled, “We had three guys who just couldn’t make the transition. We told them ‘No more hard ass, now you’re a coach and a facilitator.’ They just didn’t want to make the adjustment. And lucky for them, we were able to give them early retirement.”
Over time, the transition to an empowered workforce took hold. The plant saw steady rises in quality, productivity, and profitability. About a year into the process, one incident marked the turning point. The general manager recounted, “We started up a machine - it didn’t work - it shut down our assembly plant. So we put together a team, and these guys were incredible. They were truly a super team. Every one of those guys showed real leadership, and in the end they had the machine back up and running. I put their success story up on the marquee, at the entrance to the plant to give them some recognition. That’s when everybody realized what a little teamwork could do.”
According to the union president, “In the past, common sense never entered into the picture. It was ‘Do it the way we’re telling you to do it because we’re the managers and you’re the employees.’ Now each member of the team is expected to contribute to the leadership of the team. We’ve come a long way.” One of the shop floor employees summarized the transition to empowerment the best by stating, “I finally feel liberated . . . yeah liberated, that’s the word for it. For all these years I was just doing what I was told to do. Now Bob [the team leader] asks me what I think we should do. My ideas finally matter and it feels great!”
In the end, quality was improved by a factor of 10, the workforce was positively engaged, and the company returned to solid profitability. In fact, they ultimately, after about three years onto the road to empowerment, won their State Senate Productivity Award - analogous to the Malcolm Baldridge Award at the national level - an award the general manager and union president alike credit their success to the empowerment of the workforce.
This case is an excerpt from Share the Lead by Craig L. Pearce, Charles C. Manz and Henry P Sims Jr, reproduced with permission from Stanford University Press.
CONCLUSION
As readers will have realized by now, empowerment holds remarkable opportunities. We believe that we are in an era that is demanding far more empowerment, where power is truly shared across a greater number of individuals, as well as up and down the hierarchy. Only when we have achieved a greater appreciation for the positive outcomes associated with empowerment and a real understanding of how it works effectively, will we be able to harness its full potential to contribute to organizational performance. Only then will empowerment also stand as an equal to traditional notions of leadership, the solitary individual in a position of authority, where followers are simply interchangeable “parts.”
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Your empowerment profile
Step 1: Complete the following questionnaire.
The following items ask you to assess how you experience your work setting. If you are not currently working, think back to a previous job, or internship. Circle the number that most accurately depicts your assessment where:
Step 2: Add the totals of the following items:1 + 5 + 9 = ------ ÷ 3 = ------ = Experienced meaningfulness score
2 + 6 + 10 = ------ ÷ 3 = ------ = Experienced competence score
3 + 7 + 11 = ------ ÷ 3 = ------ = Experienced self-determination score
4 + 8 + 12 = ------ ÷ 3 = ------ = Experienced impact score
Step 3: Compare your scores to the following averages:
Step 4: In small groups, or with the entire class, discuss how your scores compare. Also, explore good examples of how empowerment has been developed in your organization, as well as how your organizations could approach empowerment more effectively. As part of this discussion, explore both the appropriate applications of empowerment as well as its limits and potential liabilities. Finally, explore how empowering each of you want to be as a leader.
Analysis of the film “Dead Poets Society”
Instructions. The film, ideally, should be assigned to be viewed outside of class time. During class the instructor will queue up several scenes to prompt discussion. Below is a list of discussion questions to guide the interpretation of the film:• Under what conditions are individuals willing and motivated to accept empowerment?
• What is the effect of individual differences in empowerment?
• What are the effects of specific leader behaviors on followers, and do the effects differ by follower?
• What is the importance of background factors, such as the norms in place in the institution or the role of other influential individuals to the process?
• How does leadership come to be shared and how do the roles transition between various characters?
• How can empowerment go awry if followers do not have sufficient skills to make sound judgment, and how can you attempt to prevent this from happening?
• How do we apply the principles we have been discussing to organizations?
Film description. The film Dead Poets Society is set at a private school - the Welton Academy for boys. During their first class with their English teacher, Mr. Keating, the boys are taken out into the hallway where he tells them they are bright individuals, with the power to choose their own path - to essentially become self-leaders. This is in stark contrast to the teaching norms at the academy. As such, Mr. Keating clearly demonstrates empowering leader behavior. As the movie progresses, we steadily see the boys take on this newfound empowerment and become effective self-leaders.
One day, one of the boys finds an old yearbook with Mr. Keating in it, where Mr. Keating listed the Dead Poets Society (DPS) as one of his important school activities. When questioned about it, Mr. Keating replies that the DPS was dedicated to finding meaning, that the members would sit in a cave near a pond and recite poetry. Subsequently, the boys decide to start up the DPS once again, ultimately demonstrating effective shared leadership in the process.
Unfortunately, we also get to witness empowerment gone awry, when the boys abuse their empowerment and begin drinking, smoking, going to parties, and otherwise running amok. Upon finding out about this, Mr. Keating counsels the boys to be wise, not foolish, with their empowerment.
In a plot twist, Mr. Keating is inappropriately made a scapegoat when one of the boys commits suicide, and he is terminated from his position. When Mr. Keating enters the classroom for the final time, several of the boys stand on their desks and call him O Captain!, My Captain!, as a way of demonstrating their sincere appreciation for how he empowered them to grow and expand their lives. The final message of the film is that people should think for themselves and be capable self-leaders, while empowering others in like kind.