Getting To Yes

My Thoughts on the Empowered Manager.

Empowerment is a great concept. If all managers and employees would actually follow this mythology I believe it would work. The problem lays with managers not truly understanding or fully implementing it. From my limited experience, managers try to implement portions of empowerment but limit other aspects. They are quick to say that they are going to give you the training and the tools you need to truly take matters into your own hands, but rarely follow threw with it. There is always some other priority that comes up or budget constraints that were unforeseen.

Even if the tools and training is given I have seen that the managers do not give the employees the freedom or the space needed to open there minds and creative thought processes. The employee then sees this restraint as the manager trying to bully or hold the employee down. This in turn causes the employee to lose faith in the manager, project and ultimately the company.

Often employees will make decisions in attempt to exercise their freedoms and their superiors will shoot down the decision or make changes to it that under mind the original thoughts. It will only take a couple times of this and the employee will give up on the creative thought process.

There are set guidelines that need to be followed when giving empowerment. These guidelines are often followed by the employee and not the manager. The manager will try to micro manage the employees which goes against all that is empowerment.

Peter Block writes to stop the bureaucratic politics within a company. Who is he trying to fool? Where I am employed you have to be able to play the political, good old boy game to move up anywhere in the company. It appears if you do not play golf or you do not go to Happy Hour after work your ability to move up is limited. It is unfortunate for those that are talented or good at what they do that they are