Do You Know What The Word Empowerment Really Means?
Do you ever have those moments where you hear a word, one you've heard many times before, and suddenly you realize you didn't really understand it till now? That word for me is empowerment. You hear it a lot, especially in business. People want their employees to feel empowered, they want them to feel like the have authority and control over things so they take action.
Yet, we've all seen too often what it looks like in reality. When someone doesn't follow the exact process or they make a mistake, how do those same bosses react in those situations. Previous words now sound empty.
When you get a sense of what true empowerment looks like, you quickly realize how wrong your view was. True empowerment looks like your manager telling you that you will make a mistake, and that is okay because everyone has done it, so we learn from it and move forward. True empowerment is your mentor telling you that the way you performed a task isn't how they would do it but it got the job done so it is just fine. True empowerment comes from people in leadership positions realizing they don't have the right answer for every question and working with their team to find better answers.
If you are a leader, your most important job is making people feel like they are empowered. It is the most important thing you can be doing.
Yet, we've all seen too often what it looks like in reality. When someone doesn't follow the exact process or they make a mistake, how do those same bosses react in those situations. Previous words now sound empty.
When you get a sense of what true empowerment looks like, you quickly realize how wrong your view was. True empowerment looks like your manager telling you that you will make a mistake, and that is okay because everyone has done it, so we learn from it and move forward. True empowerment is your mentor telling you that the way you performed a task isn't how they would do it but it got the job done so it is just fine. True empowerment comes from people in leadership positions realizing they don't have the right answer for every question and working with their team to find better answers.
If you are a leader, your most important job is making people feel like they are empowered. It is the most important thing you can be doing.
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