Perhaps all organisations, regardless of their constitution, either public or private sector, proclaim loudly that they possess the best internal environment that facilitates performance. This assertion may be true in less than five percent of the entities and that too usually have several sets of limitations attached to the process of empowerment of staff, for delivering results.
Perhaps all organisations, regardless of their constitution, either public or private sector, proclaim loudly that they possess the best internal environment that facilitates performance. This assertion may be true in less than five percent of the entities and that too usually have several sets of limitations attached to the process of empowerment of staff, for delivering results.
In the UK, in the early part of my career, the branch manager obtained from the central office, approval to dispense cash amounting up to 1,000 pounds sterling on mere examination of the cheque on the counters, client service rocketed upwards; the waiting queue disappeared. The cashier, who used to be admonished for the waiting time of clients to get cash, suddenly felt truly empowered for bringing service efficiency. This empowerment created a new wave of not merely client satisfaction but also heated up the levels of enthusiasm of cashiers across the network, who felt the management had placed value of trust, upon them. Nothing brings greater sense of responsibility than placing “trust” upon colleagues; it goes without saying that it requires fair amount of experience to do so judiciously. The bank wasn’t adventurous; it had capped the risk at 1,000 pounds even multiple errors on a single day, first wouldn’t go unnoticed and secondly the quantum of loss would have been small. This efficiency brought new clientele. In fact one branch manager gave a stop watch to one of the internees, to keep track of the waiting time for each customer on the counter. What did this mean to enabling environment? It generated trust, hope and a great sense of responsibility across the organisation. Give the frying pan to your colleagues they will learn to turn it at will.
No organisation would admit that for the easiest of processes and systems for operations, they would have managers placing impediments on the pathway to efficiency. This is done quite profoundly with the justification that humans have a tendency to flaunt the sanctioned levels of authority. What is lost is such stream of thought is that it is the empowerment that truly creates a very high degree of sense of responsibility.
Most supervisors pay lip service to grant of authority. They simply love to micromanage. Their own narrow-minded thinking and aversion to empowerment prevents them from both, taking upon themselves or for granting others, the requisite level of authority to execute an assignment. These hypocritical managers subscribe to the belief that authority invested is loss of power to their own position.
A leader, who believes in imparting authority, with the accompaniment of necessary checks and balances to it, will need to have reasonable quantum of patience to sit back and wait for both, performance and results. If there is an overload in the working environment of managers / supervisors breathing down the necks of employees and colleagues, be certain that productivity will take a toll. People perform best, when tasked with challenges and those that carry as an additional feature of feeling that they are trusted deliver the best of results.
There is hardly ever any credibility in the proclamation that: ‘we are an organisation that empowers its staff’. When there is a trust deficit between word and deed, the situation that develops, leads to de-motivation and the ever-growing presence of general lack of trust in leadership. Hypocritical leadership is the worst enemy of any organisation and that it eats into its fabric over a long period of time, makes any corrective action truly difficult. The parasite or termite leadership gnaws slowly at the root of the organisation. Even mighty oaks are felled by the tiniest of termites!
Only a fraction of employees would shun to shoulder and assume responsibility greater than they possess for reasons to participate in the organisation’s growth. I have seen in meetings, when the person in chair invites participants to share views on the agenda under discussion, they dismiss and berate the participant, who ventures to suggest some new dimension to the thought or some new process to follow. The invitation is not for creating conducive environment but for the enthusiastic participant to lose in the process, all traces of motivation. In fact from such meetings, most emerge feeling disesteemed, disgusted, and demoralised.
An apprehensive, suspicious and nervous manager can never create an environment of empowerment. Regrettably this leads to barricading of the power that can be unleashed upon the market through the process of trust, hope, authority, empowerment, responsibility and accountability.
Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. That is to say dispensation of authority allows for the emergence of the true person. If you wish to know a man, give him authority. You will in the shortest time realise what it means to, “It is ill putting a sword in a madman’s hand”.
Only those who have been judiciously supervised will know how to supervise others. Persons exercising authority is never praised. Authority is feared by the skeptical. Not many are blessed to exercise authority with discretion. Those managers who browbeat colleague are most likely to reap the whirlwind of their own sowing of the wind. An ill life, an ill end.
If the culture of this organisation is enshrined in the view that empowerment is unsafe, then you will get to witness the emergence of ‘one-man show’, with a one-man army to attack or defend the combined forces of the competition of the market place.
A few managers are great corporate jesters. They empower colleagues and then start to do their assignments. Here the manager actually hallucinates that only “he is the best to undertake the task, even better than those he may have formally delegated long time back”. Empowerment can also be an allowance to engage with other units of the organisation.
I have seen this approach/activity being viewed as suspicious and surreptitiously done internal espionage… As a CEO, whenever I invited any colleague to my office, he would, at level one, be interrogated by my secretary on “why” he/she wanted to see me and on the second level, if the (secretary) finds that the subject wouldn’t interest his/her boss, he/she would send the visitor packing to someone else in the organisation. In such situations you begin to wonder, where and at what level is “authority” residing.
‘We have an open door policy, as part of being an open organisation’ is a popular mantra of the many; but is it really the case? Nay, it is mostly, a camouflage of a closed-minded supervisor, sitting in an open door cabin. A case where one has to contend with is,”…….do not speak, until you are spoken too”. These supervisors, who operate on this premise, must know they are stifling forthright and candid expressions.
Today’s era is to seek partnership with all segments of the institution’s workforce. Isolation and aloofness is not a choice or option; each member has to participate even if it means from a distance. This is critical to create a sense of ownership.
Give hope, you reap action. Give trust you get to receive care and attention. Warren Bennis had remarked: “Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leader together in an organisation”.
Supervisors who empower others are never scared of the possibility of their position being weakened, by the performance or growth of their colleagues. They own up both: failure and success of their reports. This strengthens the employees resolve to take new, bold, and creative initiatives. And such fear no retaliation or rebuke, when handling future growth.
The writer is a senior banker and a freelance columnist
