People can become empowered by seeing the success and motivation of an individual who is determined to complete a task. It is important to understand the difference between empowering and enabling a person. In business, empowerment can be defined as the sharing of pertinent information such as rewards and power to allow the employees to take initiative to make decisions, resolve issues, and to improve performance (Business Dictionary, 2017).
The ideals of empowerment are that people are encouraged through the valuable information that is given by others to perpetuate their motivation and resources and to also be accountable and responsible for their actions. When one empowers others, it is not enabling them to depend on the person performing the empowerment. Instead, the person who empowers sets guidelines for the employee to learn to complete tasks without others. Empowerment helps others become self-sufficient, while enabling allows people to be dependent. A leader who empowers intrigues an individual to motivate themselves to be successful (Ronit, Shamir, & Chen, 2003). Studies have alluded that transformational leadership is positively correlated to dependence and empowerment, but personal identification intercedes between leadership that transforms and the dependency of followers. People should be empowered to follow inner strength to complete tasks and not depend on a leader or another individual to tell them that that can achieve goals.
It is uncomfortable to know that an individual relies on another individual to ignite their determination to complete tasks. It is shameful for leaders to create a dependency and think for the people instead of having the people think themselves through a situation. Leaders should be responsible for providing the tools and moving on to inspire others. Fear is definitely a barrier on the road to success. But, when one can overcome fear and decide that there will not be a hinderance to dismantle the goal, fear can be overruled.
- empowerment. BusinessDictionary.com. Retrieved February 25, 2017, from BusinessDictionary.com website: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/empowerment.html
- Ronit, K. B. (2003). The Two Faces of Transformational Leadership: Empowerment and Dependency. Journal of Applied Psychology , 246-255.
