Improving employee performance by developing empowering leaders & companies

Abstract

Empowerment has been a buzzword in many companies for decades, and research shows that empowerment enhances individual, team, and company performance. In practice, though, empowerment programs often fail. People who institute the programs frequently have a narrow understanding of what empowerment is, and this limited view probably helps to account for the failures. Drawing on several decades of organizational-science research, we provide a more useful, robust definition of empowerment and describe obstacles that company leaders and other employees can throw in the path of empowerment initiatives. We then provide empirically driven, practical recommendations for overcoming the obstacles and for otherwise enhancing employee empowerment, such as having leaders model empowerment and changing the company climate to align with more empowering policies and procedures.