THE IDEAL FOR many organizations would be to have cohorts of self-confident employees making decisions and taking actions on the frontlines. Surrendering authority to those who are closest to the action and are most prepared to respond to the needs of customers seems like a sensible way to conduct business. When organizations push decision making out to the rank and file and employees feel secure and emboldened to act with impact on their own initiative, we think of the workforce as empowered.
Roughly 70 percent of organizations say they use employee empowerment practices, but it is likely that claim grossly overstates the rate at which empowerment actually is enabled and succeeds.1 Like a wonder drug that promises to restore youth, repair hair loss, and reset body weight, empowerment in organizations often promises too much that too easily can be obtained. It is promoted as a catchall cure whose magical powers offer organizations speed, quality, creativity, and profits with little operational exertion.
Studies show that empowerment works when properly implemented. Companies experience fewer errors, faster turnaround times, and better customer service, as well as higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and team performance.2 However, many companies do what amounts to a parent handing the keys of a high-performance car to their teenager and hoping, day after day, that the car will return intact. Simply handing over power to another gives little assurance that something positive will come of it. And yet, that is precisely what some companies do. A transition from centralized controls and a host of checks and balances to greater distributed authority, however, is a significant shift in culture and operations that involves increased information sharing, technological enhancements, participative decision making, extensive training, quality leadership, and sociopolitical support, collaborative problem solving, and team trust. Said succinctly, empowerment entails wholesale changes to the way things are done and a bevy of organizational supports. Often the necessary preparations have not been made and empowerment strategies subsequently flounder.
Additionally, empowerment initiatives also may collapse because managers are reluctant to give up control, employees are reluctant to accept responsibility, or both. A study within a hotel chain headquartered in Europe (with brands in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa) shows how personal iniative may be differentially expressed depending on conditions. Frontline service providers assessed their general efficacy using a standard questionnaire. Supervisors were matched to these respondents and asked to evaluate employees on a seven-item, agree/disagree service performance measure. A sample item was, “Takes ownership by following through with the customer interaction and ensures a smooth transition to other service employees.” Service providers who rated themselves higher in general efficacy also were rated higher by their supervisors in the quality of service they delivered. This was true, however, only if the attitudinal climate at the hotel was perceived as one in which employees were expected to act on their own initiative—that is, where employees had the organization’s explicit permission to satisfy customers’ needs as they thought best. Therefore, employees can feel empowered and be ready to act, but an organization can negate the advantages of empowerment by withholding consent from employees to act outside set protocols and obtaining the necessary approvals.3 Sans the authority to act, the ability and motivation of employees to contribute are lost. The aim of this chapter is to bring together the elements that make the investment in employee empowerment feasible and worthwhile.
The advantages of empowerment are illustrated in a simulation that compares a directive management style with one in which managers allow their people to execute more freely and deliberately as their capabilities permit. Multiple teams of five, including the leader, participated in the Leadership Development Simulator (which originally was developed for the Squadron Officer School at Maxwell Air Force Base). The simulation is complex and is carved up into ten rounds corresponding to ten discrete decision-making periods. The teams must manage many assets to discover targets on a shared task screen. If our reading is correct, the simulation seems to be like a multiplayer game of Battleship on steroids, in which beneficial outcomes are highly dependent on collaboration, information sharing, and information integration. Two types of leaders were selected to run the team: leaders who scored highly on having a directive leadership style (taking charge of a group, giving team members instructions), and leaders who scored highly on having an empowering leadership style (encouraging team members to assume responsibilities on their own, advising team members to exchange information). The respective styles were reinforced through videos of either a directive or an empowering leader that were shown to the team leads. The results showed that directed teams perform better than empowered teams in the early rounds of play. The directed teams’ performance plateaus, however, whereas the empowered teams show consistent improvement over time until they surpass the directive teams’ performance in the later rounds of play. In the early rounds, the empowered teams get acclimated to the simulation environment, but as they test and explore, their emergent cognitions and increased information gathering, learning, and coordination pay off.4
Similarly, a field study showed the beneficial effects of people who feel psychologically empowered. Assessments of 441 nurses within five hospitals taken over three time periods showed that greater empowerment directly related to a higher composite performance score (consisting of general competencies, integrity, and specific measures of clinical practice such as coordination of care). The results also revealed a bidirectional pattern by which higher levels of empowerment increased performance, which in turn increased empowerment at a subsequent time period. This is precisely the finding we would expect: confidence in one’s ability to execute increases performance which increases confidence.5
This finding is consistent with many others showing that empowered employees feel more efficacious, are more satisfied with their jobs, are more committed to the organization, perform better, and report better health and well-being.6 At the company level, cultivating empowerment through a suite of institutional practices that emphasize personal responsibility, tolerance for risk, and open informational exchanges yields fewer organizational errors, faster turnaround times, and better customer service. At the supervisory level, supportive managers who encourage honest dialogue and independent action despite the fact that these, at times, may involve discussions about uncomfortable truths and failures are likely to engender an energized and empowered staff.7
The idea of empowerment is as old as the Industrial Revolution. In the United States, the term gained currency in the years running up to the Second World War and during the ensuing decade.8 The period was marked by considerable employer–employee strife and, with the advent of the Great War, people such as future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wondered how a country could ask people to die for principles that they were denied at home in the workplace, noting the chasm between political liberty and industrial absolutism. The swelling belief among thought leaders was that democratic ideals should apply equally to employees of companies as to citizens of nations.9
The seeds of modern organization development may be traced to this period and to those writers who, like John Dewey, were asserting the rights of workers to self-determination, creative expression, and personal fulfillment. These writers included John Commons, Ordway Tead, Henry Metcalf, and Mary Parker Follett.10 All similarly argued that employees should have a voice in the terms and conditions of employment and be able to protect themselves against harmful, capricious acts of management—that employers were morally obligated to include employees in the decision-making apparatus of the firm.
Several progressive organizations at the time did just that through voluntary employer–employee associations. These associations were variously called work councils, shop committees, cooperative associations, and, later, employee representation plans. Wm Filene & Sons, the Boston retailer, was an example of such an employer. Approximately two dozen elected employee representatives reviewed store policies and procedures in tandem with management and mediated issues regarding employee relations, including grievances. Importantly, Filene’s readily recognized the union membership of employees who chose to belong.11
Unions initially embraced voluntary employer–employee representation plans, believing that in flagrant instances of corporate malfeasance these would convert into union plans with the associated powers of collective bargaining. As these plans expanded (many by government mandate during the war to forestall strikes that would slow industrial output), unions increasingly viewed these arrangements as a means to remove unions from companies—as was forcibly done at Ludlow—or to prevent companies from unionizing (see box 9.1).12 New Deal legislation such as the Wagner Act concluded that the power differentials between employers and employees were too great to allow voluntary associations and, henceforth, outlawed them in favor of government oversight of formally constituted unions. (Legislators also believed that unions, along with the enactment of a minimum wage, would lead to higher wages and help rescue the United States from the Great Depression.)
Box 9.1
The Ludlow Massacre
Colorado was home to one of the largest vertically integrated steel conglomerates in the world, Colorado Fuel & Iron (CF&I), a Rockefeller Family–controlled entity. When the United Mine Workers of America went out on strike for higher wages and better working conditions, they were evicted from company-owned housing and set up tent cities throughout the state. The largest of these cities was in Ludlow, home to 1,200 strikers and their families. The National Guard was called in to quash growing tensions between the strikers and the company-paid detective agency, Baldwin-Felts. The National Guard abetted the detective agency, and in April 1914 opened fire on the strikers (killing six men) and burned down their encampment, inadvertently killing two women and twelve children. An armed ten-day siege ensued along a forty-mile front between strikers and the National Guard that was halted when President Wilson intervened with U.S. troops. The incident provoked public outrage and aroused a gradual change in sentiment that became more antagonistic toward corporations and more favorable toward unions.
Although these new laws prevented systemically organized supervisory groups (sans unions), they did not eliminate management’s ability to introduce participatory methods into the workplace as long as companies steered clear of rights specifically reserved for unions. In this sense, the democratization movement had lasting effects on the workplace: first, as a counterweight to the heavy-handedness and controls found in some organizations; second, as an effective means of improving workers’ quality of life; and third, as a collaborative mechanism for lifting companies’ bottom lines. Enlightened management was participatory management.13 Managers could create a more satisfied and productive workforce by promoting egalitarian values of information sharing and candid two-way exchanges in which managers and employees could mutually influence one another.
In practice, participation can take many different forms, occur at different intensities of inclusiveness, and pertain to different levels in organizations—for example, two people, a team, or a business unit. Thus, open-door policies and open-book management in which critical financial information is shared with employees are forms of participatory management. Expressions of opinions through employee surveys and focus groups are forms of participation as are idea-generation methods, such as suggestion boxes, brainstorming sessions, committee meetings, and company-wide forums. The corporate mainstay of collaborative goal setting also is a form of participation and involvement. Of all of the work that has been conducted on goal setting, one persistent result concerns the energizing effects of employee input and choice on goal attainment.14
The ability of people to have a meaningful voice in organizational affairs, and to be heard, is an essential way to confirm a person’s worth and to emphasize that their needs and interests are not to be trifled with. The importance of voice received lasting literary acclaim from Albert Hirschman’s classic work on exit-voice-loyalty. Hirschman’s original thesis was applied to dissatisfied customers who he conceived as having a choice between voting with their feet or voicing concern about an objectionable product or service, and how the provision for voice could create or intensify customers’ loyalty to a product or commitment to a brand.15 Subsequent theorists have applied exit and voice to employer–employee relations and envisioned voice within a larger participatory framework whereby employees, to various degrees, could be meaningfully and advantageously incorporated into the decision-making processes of the organization. Allowing people to earnestly express their thoughts and opinions validates their importance to the enterprise, elevates the perceived value of their contributions, and increases engagement.16 In contrast, the deleterious results of a lack of voice and perverse neglect for others’ well-being are stupendously on display in Henry Hudson’s final voyage (see box 9.2).17
Box 9.2
Henry Hudson’s Bad Day
Hudson set sail in May 1610 down the Thames to find a northwest passage to Japan and China. The spices of that region were highly sought in England; however, the means to obtain them by sea travel around Africa or South America were long and treacherous. Funded by wealthy mercantilists, this was Hudson’s fourth attempt to find a route through the Arctic to the other side of the world. He set out with twenty-two crew that included his son, John, and by November the ship, the Discovery, was locked in ice on the southern shore of what is now Hudson Bay. With six months of provisions, the crew had expected to be home by November; however, Hudson had prolonged the trip in search of a western passage until it was too late to return home. As the ice thawed and the ship broke free, the men—some with scurvy and many, at times, feeding on frogs and moss when game and foul could not be caught—were roiled by Hudson’s hesitancy to expeditiously return home despite their pleas. As a result, the more scurrilous members of the crew staged a mutiny. They set Hudson, his son, and seven crew adrift in a lifeboat and returned home. Hudson was never seen again. Known as a competent navigator but poor leader, it would have been a wise moment for Hudson to have heeded his crew’s desires and turn his ship toward home at the first chance. (Postscript. Several men, including those who avowedly incited the mutiny, died of wounds sustained from the native populations during their return voyage, and with pages from Hudson’s journal missing and the men’s evident starvation, the surviving crew were found not guilty of mutiny.)
Participatory management, perhaps, received its most visible expression in the burgeoning use of quality circles during the 1980s in the United States. (A quality circle is made up of six to twelve employees who meet regularly to solve problems affecting their work area, usually with an eye toward enhancements in quality, reductions in cost, or increases in productivity.) Quality circles reportedly were launched in Japan in 1962 at Nippon Wireless and Telegraph Company and were based partly on Deming’s work during the previous two decades.18 In the 1960s, “made in Japan,” was a euphemism for “cheap.” By the 1980s, however, Japan was the standard-bearer for quality and the rest of the world was playing catch-up. Almost half of all listed companies on the New York Stock Exchange with more than five hundred employees had a quality circle in the 1980s; some estimates place usage as high as 90 percent of the Fortune 500.19 These plans often were wedded with gainsharing plans that offered employees a portion of the business’ proceeds on a quarterly basis if they could figure out ways to reduce costs or increase outputs beyond set standards.
Quality circles often are conceived as a subset of total quality management (TQM) that involve a quantitative piece related to member training in statistical methods (e.g., Six Sigma). Despite meta-analyses that reveal the effectiveness of quality circles in improving performance, “quality circles” have an old-time sound and feel to which people anecdotally associate with “failed fad.”20 True, quality circles were a fad, but only because many companies thought they had to implement them to remain competitive, whether they needed them or not. Indeed, quality circles are the forerunners to many of the avant-garde team-based organizational structures we have today, such as holocracies: nonhierarchical structures in which work is organized into fluidly changing groups that assemble, dissemble, and reassemble as conditions and objectives warrant—similar to the mutually adjusting expert teams (adhocracies) advocated by Mintzberg years ago.21 Quality circles, therefore, are still around in many incarnations that emulate—and often replicate—the old quality circles. They range in name from project teams, TQM teams, autonomous teams, tiger teams, skunkworks, self-directed work groups, self-managed teams, and new venture units, to name a few. The groups vary in makeup depending on the size and nature of the initiative, sometimes having members only from specific disciplines, such as research, and sometimes including a cross section of the enterprise. All these groups share the ability to internally control work assignments and the way members apply their skills to realize a goal. Some groups, like quality circles, are well integrated with the operations of the company. Other groups with a greater dedication to innovation have looser connections to current organizational activities to avoid nonessentials that might be imposed by the mothership. These teams, nevertheless, are required to keep their focus on commercial ends and the inevitability of folding any discoveries or breakthroughs back into the organization for execution.
If companies once were disillusioned with worker participation in resolving problems, our experiences suggest that much of the disappointment concerned the nature of the work. Much of the work was standardized and routine; thus, groups could make modifications on the fringes but once a few fixes were made, there was little else they could do. Those aforementioned gainsharing plans abated in short order once the last drop of profit was distilled from assembly lines. This situation constrained what could be accomplished: structures were highly mechanistic, versus organic, and these situationally strong environments tended to hold behaviors tightly in place. The fault, therefore, did not lie so much in small group practices, but rather in what could reasonably be done and affected without heavy investments in new equipment and technologies.
The limitations presented by antiquated, mechanistic processes and bureaucratic structures on the stratagems of groups were duly noted by Rosabeth Kanter who prescribed more nimble and pliable designs as necessities for organizational survival.22 If companies did not change and become more responsive to their environments, they would suffer the fate of the Woolly Mammoth. Indeed, slow and inflexible, once-stalwart companies more readily began to disappear or were swallowed whole by swifter competitors. The activation of empowered employees necessitated changes to the design of organizations that provided employees with greater latitude to act.23
The old top-heavy structures that were believed to causally relate to Earth’s fifth great extinction were reconstituted to be more enterprising and adaptive. In practice, this meant removing highly stacked layers of management, widening spans of control, and loosening tightly controlled processes that afforded employees little wiggle room. In truth, companies never had to be as stodgy as some became. If mathematics is an able guide, four layers of management can accommodate an organization of fifteen thousand employees and eight layers of management can accommodate an organization of one hundred thousand employees (with average spans of control of four direct reports per layer).24 Nevertheless, there is power in numbers. To obtain rank, status, and money, an ambitious manager needed to control assets and information, which typically meant people. The more people under one’s supervisory umbrella, the better.
Recently, the general trend has been to delayer organizations and widen spans of control. For example, the number of direct reports to the CEO has more than doubled over the past forty years, from an average of five to ten. New direct reports primarily were added from functional areas, such as human resources and information technology, that formally were tucked under other disciplines. Increasingly, too, CEOs have dispensed with intermediaries such as the chief operating officer, with the CEO now serving in that capacity.25 Changing organizational relationships, experimentation with new designs, and the situational freedom prompted by modern technologies are, perhaps, the reasons we have seen the long dormant concern for spans of control rebound with zeal. A topic that drifted into obscurity once again produces anxiety about costs and norms of correctness (see box 9.3).26
Box 9.3
Spans of Control and Normative Standards
Spans of control have been of keen interest for millennia with many proposed formulaic recommendations. In Exodus, Moses was advised to divide up administrative burdens by having rulers of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens under their command. The Roman armed forces similarly divided up their legions into cohorts of ten that, in turn, were composed of six centuria, each with ten tent groups (with eight men per tent). More recent theorists have speculated that a span should be, in general, no less than four or no greater than fifteen. Clearly, spans this broad provide little guidance. Furthermore, a bounty of variables such as the complexity of the work, level of technological sophistication, and the amount of supervision required will influence the number of direct reports that can be feasibly and effectively managed. Consequently, we deploy a normative standard that looks at the relationship between levels of management and the widths of spans of control: a span should be no less than the number of levels of management under one’s auspices, including one’s own level. Thus, a person who oversees five levels of management should have no fewer than five direct reports. (There is substantial variation at the last supervisory level of management; however, the rule otherwise holds up in practice.) The precision of the rule may be incidental to the thought processes it elicits regarding the balance that has to be obtained between building an organization up and building it out.
Although these organizational changes were initiated by the desire to forge more flexible institutions, flatter organizations do little to enhance agility. A flatter structure is not the same as decentralizing authority.27 For example, a manager within a highly compressed institution may exert more direct and deliberate influence on decision making deeper in the organization—the opposite of what might have been intended. Even in a flat organization, a manager can act as a centralizing authority and can undercut the feelings of empowerment of those underneath them. Therefore, the structure is a contributory force for empowerment, but it provides no guarantee that the organization will achieve the adeptness and spontaneity it seeks unless the actual work gives people the room to act and leaders create hospitable climates for them to do so.
Formulation of Job Satisfaction
The changes that were occurring to organizational structures were coincident with changes in the nature of work more generally. As work evolved out of the machine age to, as Peter Drucker anticipated, the knowledge and information era, the leeway to act with consequence became greater.28 Work was becoming increasingly complex, pliable, and varied; jobs, in turn, were becoming more open-ended. Jobs could be enlarged, enriched, or expanded. That is, most jobs could be modified to produce more intrinsically satisfying work that was richer in content and more august in responsibility. They could be imbued with more autonomy in decision making, meaning, and impact, yielding many of the desirable characteristics that enliven work.29
Many of the of the components that people seek from jobs were well captured in Hackman and Oldham’s classic formulation of job satisfaction consisting of task identity, task significance, skill variety, autonomy support (discretion), and feedback about performance (technically, feedback is not a feature of the work per se, but a condition that is necessary for gauging progress).30 These roughly correspond to the psychological ingredients of empowerment that includes meaning, sense of competence, self-determination, and impact.31 Collectively, these offered what people have always wanted from a day’s work. Work that provides people with a greater sense of purpose and directs activities toward ends that are perceived as important (including building relationships and helping others); have a social impact or make contributions that matter to someone; are consistent with one’s skills, values, and identity; stimulate and draw on individuals’ intellectual and creative powers; and allow people to develop to their full potential.
Task Identity
Task identity is the ability to take pride in the complete assembly or completion of work from start to finish, or to work closely within a group to complete a job in its entirety. A sense of craftsmanship and pride of accomplishment are preserved by maintaining a person’s connection to his or her whole creation. Think of how a young Da Vinci must have felt when asked to paint half a painting, leaving the other half to another accomplished artist. (These paintings recently were on exhibit at the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.) Da Vinci could not have been pleased despite the excellence of the other artist. Da Vinci clearly was just more excellent.
Task Significance
Task significance refers to the degree to which the job has an impact, positively affecting the beneficiaries of the work: The work has a sense of purpose and has meaning to someone. The mission of a company often provides enough rationale for the importance of one’s efforts. People within a healthcare system understand why they are doing what they do. Still, it is possible to become absorbed in the details of one’s job and be blind to the reasons the job is being performed in the first place. To that end, it helps to provide tangible reminders to employees about why their work matters. For example, a study by Grant showed that the call time and revenues of fundraisers increased by 142 percent and 171 percent, respectively, as a result of spending five minutes conversing with a scholarship recipient.32 Similarly, radiologists wrote longer, more diagnostically comprehensive reports after they were shown a photo of their patients.33 Ritz Carlton’s legendary service largely hinges on employees’ (called “ladies and gentlemen”) daily reviews on how they positively affect the lives of guests (see box 9.4).34 In general, engendering a sense of mattering increases employee satisfaction and the probability that they will remain with their companies.35
Box 9.4 Impact and Empowerment at the Ritz Carlton
Known for their world-class service, Ritz Carlton serves as a training ground for companies who wish to emulate the hotel’s success. It begins with an intensive twenty-one-day orientation, thirty-day coach-accompanied on-the-job training, and a minimum of 125 hours of continuing education and cross-training (to instill collaboration and flexibility) per year. Lessons are reinforced through daily line-ups in which the dimensions of service are reviewed and people are able to share their “wow” stories: stories that depict how a Ritz Carlton lady or gentleman (as employees are known) responded to a guest’s problem with an extraordinary, and responsible, act. For example, a child returned to the Ritz Carlton to search for her lost teddy bear (from a Ritz Carlton tea) that she had left behind. Unable to find the bear, the employee quickly purchased another bear and drove it up in a company limo for delivery to the girl (who was endearingly surprised to see that the bear had grown up since she last saw it). Every employee has $2,000 to spend on rectifying guest problems in the manner they see fit. Empowerment, or “responsible freedom,” is key. Endowed with self-confidence through generous, ongoing training, each service provider has the authority to make decisions on the spot in behalf of the ladies and gentlemen who are their guests.
The significance of one’s work also can be enhanced through charitable or socially responsible actions. Coffee houses have fair trade policies to ensure that a cup of coffee benefits farmers thousands of miles away, hoteliers such as Concord Hospitality repurpose their used bathroom products to ensure hygienic goods are available in developing countries, and companies such as Patagonia sell socially and environmentally responsible products, including their very first, reusable climbing pitons, to assure their customers that they can enjoy nature while sustaining it.
Skill Variety
Skill variety refers to the ability of an individual to use the full complement of their knowledge and skills versus repetitiously using narrow competencies from their repertoire. This aspect of the job, when designed properly, requires employees to exercise an array of capabilities to test what they can do and accomplish, progressively developing their skills and abilities as responsibilities get broader in scope and the complexity of the work deepens. Each additional job element requires more knowledge and greater skill to obtain results.
Work Autonomy
Autonomy relates to what, how, and when work is to be performed. Fundamentally, work autonomy means having a say in what needs to be done and the best ways to achieve the ends for which one is responsible. Autonomy, then, concerns giving people the opportunity to decide what is best under the circumstances. One of the most vivid examples of autonomy, personal control, ownership, and accountability we have observed was at the statistical software, analytics, and data visualization company, SAS. SAS is located on sprawling wooded acreage in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. Its appearance is reminiscent of a college campus complete with fitness center and pool. The gardens and lawns that sit between buildings and among the collector-grade sculptures are impressive. These landscapes are the immaculate works of gardeners who each have their unique plots to tend in the manner they see fit. Executives repeatedly tell us that they want their employees to think and act like owners. The ability of employees to control aspects of their work, like that of the gardeners, is central to feelings of ownership. Having the capacity to rearrange, modify, and improve upon are attributes of possession—that is, people who can use the resources at their disposal are motivated to transform the organization for the better.
Feedback
When it comes to feedback, we have two suggestions. First, if managers and employees have established solid relations of trust and respect, then there is a wide berth for easy, honest, ongoing feedback, assuming managers give feedback in a nonthreatening, considerate manner. Feedback is much easier to give and take when it is mutually understood that the best interest of another is the goal. Few people are especially keen to be evaluated, and most are generally sensitive to feedback that can both refresh as well as devastate. No perfect recipe exists for giving feedback. In general, we deemphasize formulaic feedback, such as mixing good news with bad news. Rather, we endorse open dialogue and mutual goodwill, which together can temper negative reactions to words that may at times be clumsily misspoken.
Second, we advocate the cultivation of feedback cultures in which advice is readily invited and received. Information gleaned through solicited feedback is viewed by recipients as richer in content and more useful to performance than the same information uninvitedly given. When feedback is solicited, the motives of the advisor are seen as more benevolent.
Specifically, we encourage nurturing cultures of gratitude when people readily recognize one another’s feats. For example, Edmunds created a program that allows fellow employees to recognize one another for behaviors that are instrumental to job success (and to allocate $1–$5 of cashable or exchangeable “Ed Bucks” per acknowledgment). These behaviors are appropriately called Top Drivers. Examples of Top Drivers include the “cool cucumber” (confident enough to hit the gas on projects, even when the road ahead is uncharted; learns from mistakes; always focuses on the solution) and the “curious cat” (always asks questions; seeks answers everywhere; is forever learning and applying lessons; works outside the comfort zone). At FONA, the flavors company, people have “Hero Cards” conspicuously displayed on their desks. The cards allow employees to spontaneously recognize one another for extraordinary accomplishments that support the core values of the organization, by attaching stickers of different colors to the cards—the color representing a beneficial action illustrative of various values.
The most, clear, direct, and reachable goals combined with sound job design provide the right nutrients for empowerment. Empowerment additionally presumes that accountability for results is duly transferred and a person can competently meet their work obligations: that they not only think they can obtain the desired results, but that they really can as well. This can-do mindset, backed by true ability, is called self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy refers to a person’s conviction that they have the ability to effectively reach specific, desirable outcomes.36 Efficacy, or its companion lay term, self-confidence, involves a set of beliefs that affirmatively influence the initiation of activities, the degree of effort spent, and the persistence needed to see a task through to completion. These beliefs include the conviction that an individual has the abilities to perform a given task, is optimistic about the success of the undertaking, and has the psychological wherewithal to resiliently beat back obstacles and other impediments that interfere with progress. The same principles regarding efficacy extend to groups, albeit groups provide additional cues about the team’s ability to perform.37 For example, the members of teams can observe the competence of their colleagues and determine whether the group has the requisite number of staff and mix of capabilities to execute well. Members also are sensitive to the assorted markers of function or dysfunction within the group: the level of trust within the group, the fondness of members for one another, the degree to which members identify with the group, the quality of interactions, communications, information sharing and decision making within the group, the effectiveness of the group in setting goals and planning, the group’s collective understandings of roles and responsibilities, and the ability of the group to learn, change, and adapt. People form opinions about the team’s ability to organize and execute at the unit level, which dictates the amount of effort a given member might expend toward the team’s performance.
Because efficacy develops primarily through experience and mastery, leadership plays a crucial role—as usual. Managers’ expectations matter a great deal as those can undermine, or uplift, employee confidence. The classic demonstrations of positive expectations on behaviors have been in schools. Students who have been fictitiously designated as high achievers to teachers outperform children in control group classrooms. The results of positive expectations on performance have been replicated many times and extended into the workplace.
Unquestionably, the beliefs we hold about our abilities affect whether or not our goals will be met. That is, the expectations we have of ourselves and others influence the results that we, and they, produce.
These self-fulfilling prophecies can move us forward or hold us back. The transformative power of positive expectations is known as the Pygmalion effect.38 The mythical Greek Pygmalion is a sculptor who chisels the ideal woman, Galatea. Pygmalion longs for Galatea to be real, and the goddess of love, Aphrodite, obliges by transforming the statue into flesh and blood. George Bernard Shaw picked up on the idea of personal transformation in his play Pygmalion, suggesting that the best way to change the flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a lady is to believe that she can become someone other than who she is, and to treat her accordingly. Eliza’s metamorphosis is partly contingent on the faith others have in her to change.
Negative expectations about others’ abilities is called the golem effect. A golem is from Jewish legend. It is an anthropomorphic creature made of inanimate material such as mud or clay (like the clay people in Flash Gordon that terrified us as children). A golem often stands for an uncultivated oaf and therefore is used to describe a person from whom little is expected. In the workplace, the golem effect shows up when supervisors’ low expectations of employees degrade their performance—a frequent finding.39 High or low expectations alone, however, are not the reasons for performance increases or declines. Opinions do not directly produce the benefits or damages. People who have high (or low) expectations of others treat them in certain ways. For example, those with high expectations of others may display confidence in others’ talents by giving them new challenges, increasing their responsibilities, reassuring them following setbacks, and freeing them to make the decisions for which they are capable. Conversely, when we have low expectations of others, we may give simpler assignments, overexplain on actions to take, are quick to step in and take over the work when problems arise, and are more critical when things do not turn out as planned.
Behavior change and continuous improvement in performance depend on the conviction that we have control over our affairs, can cope with disappointments, and are able to achieve goals that matter to us. We are not just helpless actors to whom good and bad things happen. If all goes well and we are appropriately encouraged and supported, our confidence to expertly execute actions in various social contexts grows.40 We become increasingly self-assured that we have the ability to effectively reach specific outcomes. In contrast, consider an environment in which everything you do is wrong. You should have done this or that and are corrected or punished for having exercised judgment contrary to what your manager believed necessary or were expressly authorized to make. You quickly learn that deviating from tried-and-true behaviors, although woefully repetitive and boring, is preferable to the chancy actions that spur managerial ire. You, the employee, are incapacitated by indifference, unsure that any novel response you make will be adequate and rewarded. In these circumstances, people become the opposite of empowered. As people who come to believe that all good or bad that befall them is outside their control, they become helpless (see box 9.5).41
Box 9.5
Learned Helplessness
Positive psychology was born in an animal lab at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. At the time, researchers were investigating the effects of aversive conditioning on learning. Dogs first exposed to inescapable shocks were placed in a shuttle box (Solomon box) that contained a small barrier in the middle. The dogs could escape the shock delivered on one side by hopping the barrier. Dogs that never received the inescapable shocks prior to being placed in the box quickly learn to avoid the shocks. Those dogs previously exposed to shocks never learned to jump the barrier when placed in the shuttle box; if, by chance, the crossed the barrier, they never learned that their response was successful. Later, studies with humans found that those who believe that no response would be efficacious develop symptoms reminiscent of depression: sadness, loss of interest, fatigue, indecisiveness, and feelings of worthlessness. Thus began Seligman and others’ decades-long foray into research dedicated to counteracting the troubling self-defeating effects of learned helplessness.
Empowering leaders place a premium on development, look for ways to integrate learning into everyday activities (e.g., lunch and learns, speaking engagements, special projects), and, most importantly, transfer power and accountability to employees through participatory work practices and delegation.42 For example, several companies we have consulted with mandate that managers delegate a significant project or assignment downward for execution as part of the annual planning process. The communication is straightforward. Every manager is responsible for developing the talents of their people by assigning progressively challenging projects commensurate with employee interests and abilities. A few companies we have visited have gone so far as to retire the term, “manager,” in favor of “developer” to highlight the duty of development over control.
Like in baseball, the field of play in companies is set by values, norms, rules, goals, and budgets. Within these few boundaries, the manager empowers employees to play ball and, once the game begins, he or she steps onto the field only a limited number of times to advise, coach, or reposition and change personnel (see box 9.6). The manager defines the direction, establishes the contours for action, supports player development, provides the freedom to make choices, and provides adequate ongoing support and guidance to ensure success.43
Tom Caporaso, the CEO of Clarus Commerce, is fond of baseball—so fond he serves as a little league coach. Although baseball is not a metaphor that Tom pushed and is admittedly one that has limitations, we noticed the similarities between a championship baseball team and Clarus Commerce. Clarus has a lot of team speed, which they use to quickly respond to customer needs. In just the single day we were on the premises, we saw several customer requests quickly met by what to us sounded like sophisticated coding challenges. We may be wrong about the code, but not about the company’s reaction times. Make an error? You correct the mistake and are expected to stay in the game. You also are expected to back up teammates, dedicate yourself to continuous improvement, and accept wins and losses as a team, neither taking undue credit nor passing blame. The idea of a team is that success depends on coordinated effort, but it does not remove the need to acknowledge personal achievements. In a lavish ceremony at the end of the year, Clarus recognizes employee distinctions, such as Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player, through handsome glass trophies with engravings of the company’s logo. Perhaps most important, however, once play begins, the manager will step onto the field only a limited number of times. It is up to the players to play. The field of play is set by goals and budgets. Within these few boundaries, the company authorizes employees to play ball. This empowerment enables Clarus to move quickly according to conditions on the ground and to diligently meet changing customer needs.
Leadership that empowers requires a paradoxical transformation of relational power in which the person with more power and authority, the manager, helps others to enlarge their capabilities.44 The types of leaders that embody this transformational power go by different names: transformational, empowering, and ethical leaders.45 All of these varieties have elements that are well encapsulated by what it means to be a servant leader—that is, leaders who sublimate their interests to the welfare of others and the institution.46 The effects are profound. These empowering servant leaders have been found to increase intergroup trust, goal focus, self-confidence, and the sharing of information, as well as increase creativity, job performance, customer service, and sales.47 For example, the direct selling teams of a Korean cosmetics company led by servant leaders (as opposed to nonservant leaders) experienced greater quarter over quarter sales growth. Further analyses showed that the favorable outcomes were due to the greater sharing of expertise and specialized knowledge among team members.48 A study of seventy-six restaurants with takeout services found that performance (a composite of carryout accuracy, delivery accuracy, customer satisfaction, facilities audit score, and sanitation audit score) was significantly higher in cases in which servant leaders created a service culture—developed people, gave back to the community, put the interests of others ahead of their own, freed employees to handle problems, and refused to compromise on ethical principles.49
Servant leadership is subtle. On one hand, groups require direction and need leaders who decisively serve as the final authority on matters of importance. On the other hand, evidence suggests that when influence is wielded as a blunt instrument, performance and satisfaction within groups are impaired. Again, it does not matter to which leadership theory you subscribe. Any credible theory would require the following of you:
• To provide psychological anchorage of safety and security
• To provide encouragement, guidance, and support (both material and emotional)
• To nurture the development of potential
• To create expectations, clarify roles and role boundaries, and set rules and limits for task performance
• To exhibit and pass on positive values: respect, trust, and service to others
• To engender the ability to change and adapt—and to deal effectively with stress and adversity
• To promote curiosity and self-development and to help employees locate their passions
• To maintain employees’ positive outlook on their prospects for success, as individuals and as a part of teams
The virtues of power sharing and delegation of authority contribute to a favorable climate of openness, proactivity, self-determination, and responsible care for the organization. “Freedom to …” contributes a big part of the satisfaction we derive from work. Freedom to use our brains to decide the way work should be carried out is an elementary facet of job satisfaction. So, too, is having some control over the context of the work, such as the timing of the work, the place of work, and the order in which tasks need to be accomplished. Minimally, people want to have some control over the work they produce and be free from coercion and related autocratic tactics, such as threats (loss of promotion, loss of time off). Without suitable room for decision making and independent action, employees will never consider the work theirs and will never feel compelled to undertake the extraordinary.
Producing a culture in which people feel accepted, valued, safe, and vital is a critical aspect of organizational performance. Creating such a climate asks a lot of management, but the good ones can guide employees while also keeping employee passions alive and their sensibilities open to new ideas and experiences. Some people are more brittle than others and may need greater managerial care to sustain their sense of worth and efficacy. Conversely, organizations that are afflicted by unforgiving and unsupportive management miss out on all the things that a healthier outlook on employees’ value and energies would bring. They miss out on the benefits of having people who feel liked and accepted; are more accepting of their shortcomings; take greater responsibility for the consequences of their actions; worry less about rejection and feel less emotionally disturbed by negative feedback; take more risks and engage in more experimentation; unwaveringly persist with projects; and can fail without feeling irrevocably defeated.
