empowerment eylon
TRANSCRIPT
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Follett and Empowerment:
Her Legacy and Our Future
Dafna Eylon, Ph.D.
The F. Carlyle Tiller Chair of Businessand Associate Professor of Psychology
Harvard University
March 10th, 2006
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Agenda
Integrate Folletts insights with current
understanding of empowerment.
Increase our recognition of empowerment
contributions and constraints
Overcoming the empowerment paradox
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What is Empowerment?
Popular
Face validity
Multiple definitions
Viewed as both a state and a process
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Exercise: What is empowerment?
Identify an experience in which you felt
either empowered or disempowered.
Identify a situation in which you helpedothers become empowered or
disempowered.
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Empowerment Worksheet
Empowered Disempowered
You were:
You helped
others
become:
What elements contributed to creating each situation?
How did you act and feel in each situation?
Be sure to say what really happened not what you
would have liked or think should have happened.
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Behavioral Outcomes
Empowered individuals frequently
report:
Taking risks, experimenting, trusting, andincluding others
Looking inwards for improvement
Looking forward to going to work Speaking well of the org to outsiders
Acknowledging the work of others
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Behavioral Outcomes (2)
Disempowered individuals frequently
report:
Not sharing ideas with others
Wasting time double guessing
Hesitant to request help
Rationalizing failures and blaming others
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Affect Outcomes
Empowered individuals frequently
identify feeling:
Recognized, respected, energized,consulted and thanked
Secure, capable, creative, and trusted
Supported by others Having discretion over work and time
Having good will assumed
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Affect Outcomes (2)
Disempowered individuals frequently
identify feeling:
Used, ignored, lacking approval orappreciation
Others will be recognized and they wont
Easier to do things oneself in the shortrun than to empower others.
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Mary Parker Follett
Popular lecturer in the 1920s
Implicit theories consistent with todays
understanding on empowerment.
Believed all individuals wish to self-
govern
The role of biz is to develop individuals
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Fears related to
Empowerment
Fear of empowering others:
Losing control over others
Others will be recognized andappreciated while they wont
Not being viewed as powerful may lead
to job loss
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Fears related to
Empowerment (2)
Fear of empowering themselves:
Others will expect too much
Need to work harder
Resented by others
No rewards for acting empowered
Punishment may accrue from changingthe system.
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Empowerment
Enhancing and energizing context-
specific process that expands feelings
of trust and control in oneself as wellas in ones organization, leading to
outcomes such as performance and
satisfaction.
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Follett and Empowerment
Focus on function
All members are equal and must share
a common goal (collective action)
Information is freely exchanged
Power and synergy are infinite
On-going process
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The Empowerment Process
Information
ResponsibilityActive Belief
Self-Efficacy
Locus of Control
Self-Esteem
Satisfaction
Unique Perf
Outcomes
Awareness
Intervention
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Empowerment Paradox
Conditions that allow one individual to
empower others undermine the essence of
empowerment i.e., one party is superior toanother allowing:
Judgment
Providing or limiting resources
Withholding information
Resulting in lack of true redistribution
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Folletts Recommendations
Continuous interactive influence at all levels
Constantly seek and adapt to the law of the
situation and functional unity Remove impediments
Power with and not over
Expect and create the dynamic and dialectic Norms of respectful reciprocity
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The four Ms of Empowerment
The Micro LevelIndividual
The Meso LevelRelational
The Macro LevelOrganizational
The MisnomersBogus Empowerment
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Can all organizational members
answer:
Why we do things the way we do?
What do we reward in this organization?
How do I access the resources I need? What are the mission, values, and goals?
What do we need to achieve our mission,
goals, and values?
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Go to the people. Learn from them.
Love them. Start with what they know.
Build on what they have. But of the
best leaders, when their task is
accomplished, their work is done, thepeople will remark: We have done it
ourselves.
Chinese poem.
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Certain understandings between
leaders and followers are fragile:the understanding, for example,
that real participation is a process
of becoming and never arriving.
Max DePree