EMPOWERMENT

EMPOWERMENT

We have often seen little progress being nudged by these mothers towards the icy water. The babies sway towards the destination with lot of trepidation. As they near the edge, the mother penguin gives one final push which sends the little ones spiraling towards the dangerous waters lurking below. The babies will have to survive on their own . They need to outsmart the mammoth sea creatures waiting to pounce on them. In fact these tiny lives grow up and learn to think for themselves in a jetty. They have been empowered to deal with dicey situations right from an early age. It is phenomenon which is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom.

Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, control work and decision making in authonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one’s own destiny. Empowerment rules as development strategy. It is the oil that lubricates the exercise of learning. Talented and empowered human capital is becoming the prime ingredient of organizational success. A critical feature of successful teams, especially in knowledge-based enterprises, is that they are invested with a significant degree of empowerment, or decision-making authority.

Employee Empowerment does not mean that management relinquishes all authority, totally delegates decision-making and allows operations to run without accountability. It requires a significant investment of time and effort to develop mutual trust, assess and add to individuals capabilities and develop clear agreements about roles, responsisbilities, risk taking and boundaries. On the other hand employee empowerment changes, the managers mindset and leaves them with more time to engage in broad-based thinking, visioning, and nurturing. This intelligent and productive division of duties between visionary leaders, focusing on emerging opportunities, and empowered employees, running the business unit day to day provides for a well-managed enterprise with strong growth potential
People are the most important assets of an organization. Noone, however, can match the highly charged, motivated people that an organization possesses. People are the organizations repository of knowledge and they are central to its competitive advantage.

Empower people around you. Well educated, coached, and highly motivated people are critical to the development and execution of strategies, especially in today-s fast-paced, more perplexing world, where every day is a challenge and an opportunity to transform objectivies to goals and goals to reality

To encourage people to begin to think for themselves at work, we need to get out of their way, instead of telling people what to do when they ask, learn to ask them what they think should be done, it is truly amazing what can happen when you allow people to answer their own questions.
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