The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 12 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People.

It’s not what you give, but what you take away:

Power to the people

The amazing thing about empowerment is that managers seem to expect a hug or a round of applause when they announce that they wish to empower their staff. Empowerment is incorrectly looked upon as a ‘gift’ that can be given to employees. This is a foolish approach.

Empowerment is not a procedure nor a method of operation. It is a basic principle of life and a principle of success. Offering to empower people, erroneously suggests that this is within the gift of the manager. Empowerment is as much a basic ingredient of a person as self-confidence, honesty, alertness, and wisdom. It is not related to authority, nor to the giving of permission.

Empowerment, in the context of employers and employees, relates to the tolerance that one gives to a person (never to a group) to exercise freedom of thought and freedom of expression. However, the moment that any stipulation is made, freedom is challenged. And once challenged, it signals to the individual that the level of tolerance is regulated. And a regulated level of tolerance is called a ‘procedure’ not empowerment.

Be very careful to understand what empowerment really means. Take extra caution then to ensure that you understand what you are doing when you seek to empower people. For a start, you cannot empower people. You might be able to give them the authority to act, or the budget to spend, or the ability to employ and dismiss, but this does not mean that you are empowering your people. There is a big difference between empowerment and authority. You can give someone the authority, but you cannot empower them.

Empowerment works not by what you give, but by what you take away. Therefore, if you wish your staff to be empowered, you need not be concerned with what they do, but with what you do. It might come as a surprise that empowerment cannot be given. It can only surface after what you take away. For example, consider the question of confidence. Can you send a memorandum to your staff declaring that you hereby grant each of them ten doses of confidence? Is this something that can be given? No. Confidence is a vital personal ingredient that must germinate within each person. The best that you can do is to remove the burdens that might suppress the germination of confidence — such as intimidation, harsh judgement, confusing signals of displeasure, and psychological innuendoes that hinder and torment.

Often the announcement of mass empowerment comes as a desperate measure by managers who are crying for help. Their desire to empower their people has touches of abdication associated with it. They realise that the task ahead is likely to be more daunting than the task at hand, so they panic and bestow a royal decree in every direction, hoping that the front-liners will take up arms and fight the good fight.

Like many things in life, empowerment cannot be built when it is needed. The dilemma is that empowerment is rarely thought to be needed at a time when it is not needed, yet the best time to build empowerment is when you least need it. This frustrating rule is governed by the law of timing. For example, it applies to advertising. When you least need to advertise is when you ought to advertise. Waiting until a crisis emerges is not the ideal time to plan an advertising campaign. The same can be said for personal health and exercise. The best time to undertake an exercise program is when you are healthy. Waiting until an ailment sets in is hardly the time to go to the gym for a solid workout.

Now comes the test of character. Why should a manager encourage empowerment at a time when there is no apparent need to empower the team? After all, empowerment of others might be misconstrued as diminishing your own power. Allowing others to operate independently might put into question your own worth. This is scary for most managers who are insecure at best. Furthermore, considering the rate of job change and turnover, who in their right mind would risk an innovation that might jeopardise the short-term gain in favour of a longterm result — especially when the manager is unlikely to be around to reap the rewards in the long term? In addition, short-term measures are considered to be far more important than other measures because careers are made and lost as a direct consequence of the short term.

Power to the people

Another misunderstanding arises when managers assume that empowerment means giving power to the ‘masses’. First, empowerment has nothing to do with power, and, second, it is unwise to assume that empowerment is something that can be bestowed upon the ‘masses’.

Empowerment and power, as two words, might resemble each other. However, their similarity ends with their spelling and pronunciation, not with their meaning.

What is power? In organisational terms power is relative — meaning that power is only important when those who have power stand over those who lack power. It is a philosophical question about opposites similar to the notion of direction. What is ‘up’ if ‘down’ does not exist? What is ‘happiness’ if ‘sadness’ does not exist? What is ‘left’ in the absence of ‘right’? This relativity makes power something that cannot be given to all employees because, the moment that they all have it, it loses its advantage. In this context, power is governed by the law of saturation — when everyone has access to something (such as power or technology) it loses its advantage. (See Chapter 22, ‘Prosperity in the modern world’.)

Empowerment can mean to accept freedom of thought and freedom of expression. It encourages and tolerates employees as people, not as robots. At its most supreme, empowerment still demands that employees acknowledge the limits of their duties. Furthermore, it does not tolerate rules being broken or any form of rebellion. Empowerment is respectful and dutiful, yet it serves one important purpose — to allow everyone, no matter the rank, to express their feelings (if they choose to do so). Empowerment allows all employees to react without the constraints of organisational politics, so that they can work and interact without fear of retribution.