Thought Tweet #426 It ain't 'empowerment', it's 'un-entanglement'.
The Thinking Behind The Tweet
We often hear advice like, "You should empower your people, provide them autonomy, give them decision-making authority, and get them to take responsibility".
That's not the right mindset. We do not 'empower' people or 'give' people things like autonomy: we do not transfer power or energy from us to other people. People have, within them, all the energy and power they need. We can help people by showing them how to 'un-entangle' the energy and power within them. One good way of doing this is leading by example.
[And, we should be clear about another thing: 'delegation of authority' is not 'empowerment'.]