We have often seen little penguins being nudged by their mothers towards the icy water. The babies sway towards the destination with lot of trepidation. As they near the edge, the mother penguin gives one final push which sends the little ones spiraling towards the dangerous waters lurking below. The babies will have to survive on their own. They need to out smart the mammoth sea creatures waiting to pounce on them. In fact these tiny lives grow up and learn to think for themselves in a jiffy. They have been empowered to deal with dicey situations right from an early age. It is a phenomenon which is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom.
Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, takes action, and control work and decision making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one's own destiny. Empowerment is always construed as a development strategy. It is the oil that lubricates the exercise of learning. Talented and empowered human resources are becoming the vital ingredients of organizational success. A critical feature of successful teams, especially in growing organizations, is that they are endowed with a significant degree of empowerment, or decision-making authority.
Employee Empowerment does not mean that management abandons all authority, resorts to total delegation of decision making and allows operations to run without responsibility. It requires a significant investment of time and effort to develop mutual trust, assess and add to individuals' capabilities and develop clear agreements about roles, responsibilities, risk taking and boundaries. On the other hand employee empowerment changes the managers' mind-set and leaves them with more time to engage in broad-based thinking, visioning, and nurturing. This wonderful phenomenon of employee empowerment provides impetus for augmenting the growth potential of the organization and facilitates plethora of learning opportunities for the employees to stride towards individual excellence.
People are the most important assets of an organization. No one, however, can match the highly charged, motivated people that an organization possesses. People are the organizations repository of knowledge and they are essential to its competitive advantage.
Empower people around you. Well educated, coached, and highly motivated people are critical to the development and execution of strategies, especially in today's competitive world where every day is a challenge and an opportunity to transform objectives to goals and goals to reality.
To encourage people to begin to think for themselves at work, we need to get out of their way. Instead of telling people what to do when they ask, learn to ask them what they think should be done. It is truly amazing what can happen when you allow people to answer their own questions."
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