This week I learned that empowerment for leadership is giving the freedom those we lead to be successful by allowing them to do it their way verses my way. This reflection blog is to review article “Empowerment Rejuvenating a potent idea”, written by Russ Foster and provide a compare and contrast to the information learned in the course material. The catch phrase from the executive summary states that empowerment creates an auto assumption that employees will be focused and motivated to work but then again there is no “one size that fits all” for empowerment strategies.  Forrester discusses how managers continuously find ways to empower their teams but there are six short circuits organizational empowerment. My reflection blog will discuss real time examples with a compare and contrast centered around precipitous empowerment, psychological and how once size approach does not fit all. (Forrester, 2000)

Precipitous Empowerment

Precipitous empowerment decisions are made quick and tend to come with a high level of risk. An example of precipitous empowerment is when my company decided to merge a program of employees spread across two states into one central location. We had new management who developed this plan of benefits for those who chose to move to another state, and made the promise taking care of employee families and jobs if they would buy-in to this process. The rules were strict that you had to remain in your current role for one year, and then you could start applying to open jobs at the original location. Along the transfer of employees to one location, there was the merge of skills from two fighter programs, F-16 and F-22. The empowerment was to work as a team, present new ideas to help leaders understand work scope challenges and strategies. There was great teamwork for the first six months of the transition, but as leaders were being forced out of the company due to a new need to reduced management levels due to having to high of an overhead structure for the combined programs employee attitude started to change. Anytime there is a reduction in leadership, and a new panel is implemented there seems to be a decrease in motivation and difficulty in self-empowerment, not accounting for the leaders ability to empower the team to keep them focused.  There was also a very small group of employees who moved, had to do so without their families, which creates their own level of personal hardships.  We had various town hall meetings where management would get up and define the changes, vision, and how we are a team. When the meeting was over you hear opening the lack of trust or respect due to the leaderships precipitous empowerment approach that carries a level of unmotivated employees. Once you lose the trust of the employees, it doesn’t matter how precipitous your change is, it will be hard to empower. (Forrester, 2000)

Psychological Concept

            I really enjoyed the concept that  “empowerment tactics are designed to alter the belief system of employees about their own power, to increase self-efficacy, and to tap into employee’s intrinsic motivation to do their work”. (p69) I can relate to this concept as a self-starter I can do my job successfully and need little to no assistance. I have the confidence and power to discuss my work on behalf of my program, and often leadership comes to me for answers for our customer. The psychological power is balanced with my skills and leadership demonstration. That power is auto given, however, during audits and inspections I automatically seem to lose that power as management feels the need to control all communications due to the reputation is now on them, directly. (Forrester, 2000)

            Forrester makes a statement that “Some organizations focus more on convincing employees of the power they have than actually on giving them more of it”. (p69) I found this interesting as one of the references that you can see power auto placed when you see a poster with a title on it, but its applied power verses real power. A personal example that came to mind is holding the position of Executive Vice President of our leadership association. My picture is in every building onsite and I have power by a position, but I rally don’t have power at all. Any events that are conducted as an organization have to be approved by the human resources department.  I view the psychological approach to power is based on convenience, and it can change as quickly as it is assigned. (Forrester, 2000)

One size fits all

Empowering employees to do work the same is a fallacy due to the approach to solve a problem, create a new design, or lead a team of performers are all different based work roles. In my work role as a scheduler my monthly tasks are routine, but my daily tasks are variable. My team is comprised of scheduler integrators, cost integrators, cost analysts, estimators and contracts negotiators. Our teams lifecycle of work is divided by those who bid and obtain new work, a few of us that engineer the schedule and cost for current work, and those who perform contract closeout. The speed of our team is variable and empowerment is variable based on the effort. Forrester talks about how programs fail at empowerment due to not differentiating among their employees (p79), and the counter would be you have to empower the team the same when you are faced with a critical deadline and there is no time to be different. Our team is cross trained enough to where a scheduler can do a cost analyst job, and vice versa allowing to be different approach to empowering the team. I think at times the employee has to change to the empowering approach verses leaders changing to the employees. (Forrester, 2000)

Conclusion

            There are so many assumptions on empowerment and there is a tendency to keep re-inventing the wheel of how to empower teams. Empowerment to me is two part due there being self-empowerment, and leadership empowering others to succeed. I have been very lucky in my career to not have to be empowered by a leader, as I tend to be an inventor who is always looking for ways to do things more efficient and take less time. I enjoy sharing my creations, and have been deemed a visionary on my annual peer reviews. I enjoyed reading this section on empowerment as I can easily see where leaders struggle on empowering their teams to be creative. The area that I felt deals with empowerment success is lack of trust and the turbulent changes in the work place. The one are I did not see in the writing is the multi-generations working in the workplace with the compare and contrast of how to empower each other. I would have to admit the challenge of empowering the new generation entering the workforce due to their need of always asking why when you give them an assignment, and have had to learn to take a step back and remember they are learning and its my job to teach.

Works Cited

Forrester, R. (2000). Empowerment: Rejuvenating a Potent Idea. The Academy of Management Executive , 14 (3), 67-80.