When you empower someone, you provide the training and guidance to cultivate skills that serve for a lifetime. You start with a person's basic talents and then structure opportunities to incrementally build skills and confidence levels.
Think about how a mama bird cares for her young. At first she provides everything. Her chicks are helpless, totally reliant, and will die without her constant attention. As they grow stronger, she gives them more of the survival responsibility. She guides them, shows them how and where to find food, and how to stay safe from predators. Little by little, she steps back and makes them do more of the work, often to their loud disapproval. She teaches them essential skills and when they are sufficiently grown, she pushes them out of the nest to fly on their own. And so the cycle continues.
Think about what would happen if mama bird didn't follow this pattern. As her chicks grew she would spend more and more time trying to find enough food to satisfy them, to her own detriment. The chicks would be totally helpless and would soon perish because they didn't know where or how to find food. They have no survival skills.
Without empowerment, you deprive a person of experiences to build skills and so they remain dependent. They become weak and powerless when everything is done for them. When you make all the decisions; you don't assist them, you just keep the power. People, who feel powerless stop trying, stop caring, feel disillusioned, and disengage from the process. You aren't doing a person any favors or saving them any pain by depriving them of the opportunity to exercise the power they have within.
When you empower someone, you give them the tools to determine their own destiny. You help people recognize they are important, that their input matters. The empowering process snowballs into increased independence, self-reliance, strength, and belief in one's abilities. You make people self-sufficient and put them in control of their own destiny.
The empowering process:
1. Involve people in determining the means to reach goals.
2. Encourage and praise all contributions along the way.
3. Be willing to delegate work.
4. Have high expectations. People rise to expectations of them. If you believe they will succeed and communicate this to them, it is human nature to do everything they can to fulfill your expectations.
5. Have faith. When you assign a task, let the person get the job done. If you micro-manage, people tend to lose faith in their abilities and may become resentful.
6. Celebrate milestones. Celebrate each achievement along the way. Give credit where credit is due and recognize all contributions.
Empower your employees. Help them soar to heights they only imagined possible!
