Employee Empowerment Rules - Managed Well

If you want to create a workplace in which people choose to be motivated, contributing, and happy, one of the fundamental principles of that workplace is employee empowerment. I don't hear employee empowerment described as scary these days as I often did twenty years ago, when employee involvement was a term used to describe a particular relationship between car makers and their unions. But, I do still encounter managers and workplaces that believe empowerment means out-of-control and undirected employees and that people do well only when you tell them what to do.

This is far from the truth. In fact, if you truly enable people to make decisions about their work, their products, their customers, and their jobs, you set good employees on fire with motivation. Of course, you need to provide the overall direction and you also need goals and an agreed upon picture about what success in accomplishing a particular goal looks like. They do need to have the context in which to make good decisions.

And, you need to have the mindset that not everything needs to be your way or match your picture of "how" you'd accomplish the goal. In no case, no matter how empowering or directive the leadership style practiced, should responsibility and accountability for decisions go by the wayside. But, empowered employees, with appropriate direction within a strategic framework with clear goals, can set the world on fire. The debate will rage on forever, about directive leadership vs. empowering leadership, and there is some evidence that there may be times and circumstances for both.

Dr. Keith M. Hmieleski, assistant professor of management at the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and Dr. Michael D. Ensley of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. found different phases and stages of an organization require different leadership styles in: A Contextual Examination of New Venture Performance: Entrepreneur Leadership Behavior, Top Management Team Heterogeneity and Environmental Dynamism.

Especially in certain settings, a more directive style may work better, but when you read between the lines, the directive part of the leadership style appears more closely linked with setting the goals than overall leadership:

"Most striking among the study’s results is that the empowering style of leadership, commonly thought to be most effective with heterogeneous teams in industry environments of rapid change, was clearly shown to falter under those very conditions.

"'Fast-moving environments demand fast decisions," notes TCU’s Hmieleski. That’s where directive leadership comes in. A directive leader can rapidly clarify what work needs to be done in the moment and by whom."

"The new study shows that both styles have their place, depending on the circumstances. For instance, with heterogeneous teams in stable industry environments, empowering leadership shines as the clear choice because stable environments provide time for team members to reach cohesive decisions. In that environment, directive behavior can grate on team members and reduce their commitment to the venture.

"With teams that are more homogeneous, the opposite effects were found. In dynamic environments directive behavior is unnecessary because team members already tend to share the same goals. In those circumstances, companies performed best when led by empowering leaders.

"In stable environments, ventures with homogenous top management teams had the most success when led by directive leaders."