People Don’t Need to Be Empowered (They Want This Instead)

Your employees are already powerful.

Your employees are already powerful.

Illustration by Hurca! — licensed via AdobeStock

I hate the word “empowerment.”

Everyone loves to preach about the virtues of empowering employees to neutralize disengagement and lack of accountability. But, if empowerment is so magical, why is employee disengagement on the rise?

For starters, empowerment is an intrinsic state of being. It’s not something you can provide.

When employees start a new job, they are fully engaged and empowered. But, then organizations start flooding them with rules, policies, hierarchies that limit people.

Outdated workplace cultures strip power and energy away from employees (even top-performers).

People are not powerless — they don’t need to be empowered. They need to be liberated.

The problem with empowering people

“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.”

— Dan…