Quotable Quotes: Empowerment
by Miki Saxon
There is much talk about how empowering workers juices creativity and hikes productivity.
Some companies claim that the best empowerment comes from eliminating full-time employment completely so that workers can move freely from one company to another.
My own opinion is that while that may work for a small percentage, it will have the opposite effect on the great majority.
Google’s Eric Schmidt says, ”Employees have to feel empowered. That’s what makes people love what they do and where they work,” but if they don’t really work there why should they love it?
Before the turn of the century, Bill Gates said “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others,” but many leaders seem more interested in accumulating, holding and controlling power.
They don’t understand that doing so makes them smaller and weaker, whereas, as Barbara Colorose said, “The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process.”
Scott Adams has another take on the subject. He says, “I’m slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can’t motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles.”
While I don’t agree about the motivation, I do agree about removing obstacles—and one way to do that is to empower people with enough authority to do their job.
Image credit: h.koppdelaney on flickr
