empowerment eylon

8/13/2019 Empowerment Eylon

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Follett and Empowerment:

Her Legacy and Our Future

Dafna Eylon, Ph.D.

The F. Carlyle Tiller Chair of Businessand Associate Professor of Psychology

Harvard University

March 10th, 2006


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Agenda

Integrate Folletts insights with current

understanding of empowerment.

Increase our recognition of empowerment

contributions and constraints

Overcoming the empowerment paradox


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What is Empowerment?

Popular

Face validity

Multiple definitions

Viewed as both a state and a process


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Exercise: What is empowerment?

Identify an experience in which you felt

either empowered or disempowered.

Identify a situation in which you helpedothers become empowered or

disempowered.


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Empowerment Worksheet

Empowered Disempowered

You were:

You helped

others

become:

What elements contributed to creating each situation?

How did you act and feel in each situation?

Be sure to say what really happened not what you

would have liked or think should have happened.


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Behavioral Outcomes

Empowered individuals frequently

report:

Taking risks, experimenting, trusting, andincluding others

Looking inwards for improvement

Looking forward to going to work Speaking well of the org to outsiders

Acknowledging the work of others


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Behavioral Outcomes (2)

Disempowered individuals frequently

report:

Not sharing ideas with others

Wasting time double guessing

Hesitant to request help

Rationalizing failures and blaming others


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Affect Outcomes

Empowered individuals frequently

identify feeling:

Recognized, respected, energized,consulted and thanked

Secure, capable, creative, and trusted

Supported by others Having discretion over work and time

Having good will assumed


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Affect Outcomes (2)

Disempowered individuals frequently

identify feeling:

Used, ignored, lacking approval orappreciation

Others will be recognized and they wont

Easier to do things oneself in the shortrun than to empower others.


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Mary Parker Follett

Popular lecturer in the 1920s

Implicit theories consistent with todays

understanding on empowerment.

Believed all individuals wish to self-

govern

The role of biz is to develop individuals


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Fears related to

Empowerment

Fear of empowering others:

Losing control over others

Others will be recognized andappreciated while they wont

Not being viewed as powerful may lead

to job loss


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Fears related to

Empowerment (2)

Fear of empowering themselves:

Others will expect too much

Need to work harder

Resented by others

No rewards for acting empowered

Punishment may accrue from changingthe system.


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Empowerment

Enhancing and energizing context-

specific process that expands feelings

of trust and control in oneself as wellas in ones organization, leading to

outcomes such as performance and

satisfaction.


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Follett and Empowerment

Focus on function

All members are equal and must share

a common goal (collective action)

Information is freely exchanged

Power and synergy are infinite

On-going process


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The Empowerment Process

Information

ResponsibilityActive Belief

Self-Efficacy

Locus of Control

Self-Esteem

Satisfaction

Unique Perf

Outcomes

Awareness

Intervention


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Empowerment Paradox

Conditions that allow one individual to

empower others undermine the essence of

empowerment i.e., one party is superior toanother allowing:

Judgment

Providing or limiting resources

Withholding information

Resulting in lack of true redistribution


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Folletts Recommendations

Continuous interactive influence at all levels

Constantly seek and adapt to the law of the

situation and functional unity Remove impediments

Power with and not over

Expect and create the dynamic and dialectic Norms of respectful reciprocity


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The four Ms of Empowerment

The Micro LevelIndividual

The Meso LevelRelational

The Macro LevelOrganizational

The MisnomersBogus Empowerment


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Can all organizational members

answer:

Why we do things the way we do?

What do we reward in this organization?

How do I access the resources I need? What are the mission, values, and goals?

What do we need to achieve our mission,

goals, and values?


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Go to the people. Learn from them.

Love them. Start with what they know.

Build on what they have. But of the

best leaders, when their task is

accomplished, their work is done, thepeople will remark: We have done it

ourselves.

Chinese poem.


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Certain understandings between

leaders and followers are fragile:the understanding, for example,

that real participation is a process

of becoming and never arriving.

Max DePree

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