Empower Yourself: The Empowerment Myth

If ever there were a time for empowerment, this would be it. It sure seems like events are conspiring to dis-empower us as we transition through these still rocky economic times.

However, have you had the somewhat scary experience of bumping into someone who wants to empower you? That's a pretty interesting notion, I must admit. On the one hand, I have been in the business of empowerment for thirty plus years; on the other, empowerment is generally a myth and doesn't work.

Or at least, no one else is going to empower you. Not me, not your boss, not your husband or wife, not your church, not anyone. Well, maybe one person can. That one would be you.

I frequently hear the term "Empowerment" being used in corporate settings where some person or group wants to talk about "empowering" people. For the most part, lots of people think highly of this notion and jump on the empowerment bandwagon.

For my part, I would welcome larger numbers of empowered people in just about any aspect of life. That is, I would welcome the empowered if that meant people taking responsibility for improving what they can about their life circumstances, and leaving behind the notion that blaming someone else is the correct route.

Including right now. Including these trying economic times. Including those of us who have lost jobs.

For most of us, the word responsibility conjures up images of blame or fault. There's plenty of that being hurled around these days, and perhaps deservedly so. However, you can blame until the cows come home and nothing will change as a result, no matter how articulate you are in the blame game.

There is however, a much more empowering definition of responsibility. Fritz Perls, in his super little book, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, redefined responsibility by spelling it slightly differently: response ability.

With this change in spelling, the word takes on a whole new meaning; it becomes less about blame and fault and more about having the ability to respond. If we could have more (self) empowered people exercising their ability to respond, I suspect we could cure a whole lot of what ails us in this world.

I think I understand the good intentions of those who would "empower" me. It usually has to do with allowing or encouraging decisions to be made at lower levels of an organization. In other words, someone is encouraging me to exercise greater ability to respond in the everyday activity of my job.

To the extent that decisions get made closer to the level where the work actually takes place, this kind of empowerment could be a really great thing.

If your employer wants to "empower" you to make customer service decisions, that's probably a good thing - assuming you have the requisite authority to go with the decisions that are being handed over to you. And if they stand behind you in true support, then it's getting better.

However, I'm not so sure that most empowerment efforts are sufficiently thought through. Let's take a closer look at empowerment as it applies individually and in terms of what it suggests about capability or the lack thereof.

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