3 Risks of Giving Too Much Employee Empowerment

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3 Risks of Giving Too Much Employee Empowerment

Employee empowerment is to empower employees to achieve a high level performance or to let the employee take ownership and accountability.
Some of the ways a leader can empower others are:

1. Encourage self-directed decision making,
2. Share information, and
3. Coach others for performance.

Marcel Schwantes in an article argues that when employee empowerment is overdone, you risk 3 potential train wrecks:

1. When you give employees too much authority to make decisions.
2. When you give them too much access to important information.
3. When an employee's level of authority becomes 'I can do whatever I want'.

I believe the Ranjay Gulati Framework and strong leadership could be able to prevent those potential train wrecks from happening.
Source: Marcel Schwantes, "3 Ways Employee Empowerment Can Turn Into a Train Wreck", Aug 2016.

		Comments Rating
		2 K R Sethuraman Professor, Malaysia
	Given a Long Rope, One can Use it to Climb or to Tie Oneself in Knots! Having experienced such adverse outcomes, I agree with the inherent risks in empowering employees. However, it is better to empower employees in a graded manner than keep them dependent and powerless to even decide on simple problems which they face at work. During my motivational talks to subordinates in the team, I often remind them of the quote: "Given a long rope, one can use it to climb or to tie oneself in knots! And even hang oneself with that!". So please remember that with power comes the responsibility to use it wisely and for betterment of outcomes in your field of work. Of course, the leader of the team must take vicarious responsibility for the actions of all the team members. Therefore, pre-assessment of the employees' readiness to accept more responsibilities is an important job for the leader.