The members of the senior leadership team listened intently as the VP of HR reported the survey findings regarding empowerment levels throughout the company.
The results were disappointing, and the team’s concern was obvious. Appropriately enough, it was the business unit’s president who seemed most concerned of all. He was usually a stickler for staying on agenda, but when the allotted time for this topic had come to an end, he said, “This is important. Let’s keep going.”
Thirty minutes later, the president reluctantly called time and turned to his VP of Quality: “We clearly have some process problems that are causing people to think they’re not empowered. Get your best Six Sigma experts to work on identifying those process problems and then fixing them.”
He turned back to his senior leadership team: “Let me be as clear as I can be. You are all empowered. I now need you to go back to your people and make sure they know that they are empowered!” For a brief instant, the VP of Marketing looked as though he were about to say something, but he chose to remain silent.
Fast forward to later that same day, when I had managed to get a few private moments with the Marketing VP in his office.
“Toward the end of the discussion about empowerment, you looked like you were about to speak up,” I said.
He nodded.
“What was it you wanted to say?”
“I wanted to say that we can keep telling our people they’re empowered, but if they don’t feel empowered, they’re not empowered.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “Too risky.”
*****
Empowerment is not something that can be bestowed upon others in a gesture of managerial noblesse oblige. Rather:
Empowerment is a feeling of safety while exercising judgment on the job.
Empowerment is a feeling that someone has, not an assertion made by someone else. Telling people, “You are empowered!” is a bit like the old joke about the commander telling the troops: “All liberty is canceled until morale improves!” The Marketing VP wanted to point this out, but he didn’t feel safe enough to do so. In other words—and more than a little ironically—he didn’t feel sufficiently empowered to question the boss’ directive about empowerment.
Empowerment is a feeling of safety. If the kinds of questions your people are asking themselves just before exercising judgment sound like these—“Have I done my due diligence? Will this decision result in the best outcome for the business? Is it consonant with our values?”—then you’re probably in pretty good shape, empowerment-wise. But if the first thing that pops into their heads is, “Will the boss rip my face off if I do this?” then you have a fair amount of room for improvement.
Empowerment comes into play when there is judgment to be exercised. And the most basic judgment of all is whether or not the situation at hand calls for judgment. You can’t shrug away a violation of company policy by saying, “I felt empowered to do it.”
Empowerment is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. You may have one team member whose reliability and credibility are such that you are inclined to give her a lot of autonomy. Past experience with another team member, however, tells you that any project plan he develops must include sufficient checkpoints for your review and/or approval.
Both team members can be fully empowered as long as: 1) there is clarity regarding the run rules—“Do I have autonomy? Do I need the boss’s review? His approval?”; and 2) reasonableness and professionalism are maintained when things don’t turn out as planned, since judgments are, after all, merely judgments.
So if your first reaction when something untoward happens is to, ahem, rip someone’s face off…well, let’s just say that the selection panel for the Empowering Leader of the Year Award isn’t likely to be dropping by for an interview any time soon. Here’s a far more empowering way to handle things: “Things didn’t go as expected. It’s the real world. Stuff happens. Let’s find some time tomorrow to discuss whether we might have missed some early warning signs that could have enabled us to make some mid-course corrections.”
If you stay focused on satisfying those two conditions, you’ll be less likely to adopt an empowerment strategy based entirely on louder and more frequent assertions that: “You ARE empowered!!” You’ll also find yourself spending less of your time having to reassure people that, “Really, it’s OK. You don’t have to check with me before deciding whether to have Coke or Pepsi as your lunchtime beverage.”
Why? Because your people will feel safe to exercise that judgment—and maybe even far more important ones—on their own.
John Guaspari is an employee engagement expert and author of the new book “Otherwise Engaged: How to Get a Firmer Grip on Employee Engagement and Other Key Intangibles (If, That Is, It Were Possible to Grip Something That’s Intangible)” (Maven House Press) from which this article is adapted. For more information, visit www.johnguaspari.com
