Wanna See Something Really Scary?

Meet Grace. Grace is terrified. 

Image by wayhomestudio on Freepik

Grace just left a team meeting where the team’s manager said, “You are all empowered to do whatever is necessary for this project’s success.” She’s been shaking in her shoes ever since.

But why? Why would her manager’s statement of empowerment frighten her more than all of the scary movies currently playing at her local multiplex?

To begin with, she doesn’t know what it means. Her manager gave no context, no definition, no boundaries, and, scariest of all, no reason why she and her team weren’t already empowered to do their jobs before now. Instead of feeling capable of meeting the challenges of finicky stakeholders and looming deadlines, she’s confused and scared about not showing up as empowered.

And she’s not alone.

Well meaning managers everywhere attempt to motivate their teams with the language of empowerment. The problem, of course, isn’t the word or even the sentiment it carries. The problem is the confusion of the implied power dynamic and the lack of reinforcing structures behind it among many other reasons.

The Conundrum of Empowerment

Let’s take a look at a few of the questions that immediately popped up in Grace’s head:

• “If we’re empowered, then why do all of the decisions the team makes need to be approved by two or three layers of management?”

• “How does empowerment reduce the amount of work to be done or increase the time in which to do it?”

• “If we’re empowered today, then can we be disempowered tomorrow?”

The issue underlying Grace’s fear is that people don’t need power or permission to do great work, they need cultures that inspire fearlessness, risk tolerance, and the promotion of openness and transparency. Short of that, empowerment is merely a buzzword that does more to make managers happy than it does their teams. 

And why shouldn’t it? When you empower someone, you’re benevolent, you’re kind, you’re gracious enough to share. 

“The notion of empowerment presumes that the organization has the power and benevolently ladles some of it into the waiting bowls of grateful employees. That’s just a slightly more civilized form of control.”

~Daniel Pink, Drive

The flipside is, of course, that if you need to empower someone, then you must have taken power from them previously. 

Remove the Fear

If not empowerment, then what? The answer is autonomy. 

It all comes down to what motivates people to be and do their best. For several decades now, research has shown that people respond best to intrinsic or internal motivation--things within them that make them feel good when they accomplish something. 

Empowerment and, quite paradoxically, bonuses and other extrinsic or external rewards fall far behind when it comes to motivation, especially for people who are paid to be creative, responsive, and knowledgeable in the face of ambiguity.

Autonomy is its own reward and comes with a lot of positive by-products for the organization, not the least of which are accountability and engagement. 

Autonomy in an organization means distributed decision making or putting authority where the information is. It means that the people closest to the work are best equipped for making decisions, not managers two and three times removed.

This is what Grace and her team inherently know, and the lack of it is what scares her.  

If her manager really wanted to motivate the team, she would’ve announced new team-based decision making authority and new, less obstructive ways of ensuring stakeholder buy-in. And even if empowerment were still part of the vocabulary it would accompany clear definitions and boundaries, easy to measure definitions of success, and open and frequent feedback channels. 

Context Is King

Creating a culture of fearlessness and full engagement doesn’t necessarily mean completely flattening an organization or totally relinquishing managerial control. It does, however, mean moving from control to context.

When leaders establish the context of work to be done instead of controlling it, they provide clarity and, most importantly, autonomy. Teams and individuals naturally take more ownership of their work when someone isn’t telling them how to do it, or worse yet, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. 

The truth is that most employees are waiting for a reason to feel inspired and be a part of something bigger than themselves. Organizations, however, often not only take the opposite view that employees are waiting for the opportunity to slack off, but actively create and promote cultures that reinforce that skewed outlook. 

If you believe that you’ve hired the right people, then get out of their way and let them do their best work. Don’t scare the Grace’s of the world with unnecessary layers of communication, archaic control structures, and powerless words unsupported by organizational action.