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Why You Can Never Empower People, but You Absolutely Must Engage Them

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Leaders have wasted a lot of time and money on two of our favorite Business Buzzword Bingo terms for the last three years: empowerment and engagement. Here’s the real skinny.

Gallup says a whopping 70% of people are disengaged from their work. That’s critical because the very few companies with high engagement enjoy much higher net profit margins and five times the shareholder return.

Engage People By Empowering Them?

The standard answer is that if you empower them, they will become engaged. But that is an answer developed within a command and control mindset, which is not the place to find out how people are empowered. As Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them.”

In a recent discussion with an elderly billionaire who had made his money in the 80’s and 90’s, he was convinced that, “It is the job of the CEO to empower people.” He bristled dismissively when I suggested people might not need him to empower them. Einstein’s quote came to mind, and I realized he was trying to solve the problem from the mindset that had created it. He was well known as a top-down, command and control manager, and he was taking special delight in having the power to empower people, by sharing a little of his power with them.

Thank You, But I’m Already Fully Empowered

But empowering someone this way is a subtle way of communicating, “I’m still in power, and the only reason you have any power at all is because I granted a little of mine” – a patronizing and perhaps even belittling view of empowerment. The message is, “You don’t show up fully equipped to contribute – without me, your personal empowerment is insufficient.”

The reality is, we can’t empower people. They show up empowered and all we can do is suffocate their innate ability and desire to contribute, innovate, make decisions and generally be self-managed adults. Empowerment is the absence of the heavy hand, just like an apple seed only grows where you don’t put down plastic. The seed shows up empowered and ready to sprout. I can’t add anything. All I can do is smother it and keep it from sprouting.

But Give Me a Reason I Should Engage With You

Engagement, however, is all on us. While people show up empowered – it’s who they are, the seed is complete – they are likely to show up not engaged in any way. The apple seed can remain just a seed for a very long time if the conditions aren’t right to grow. In the same way, people will be in neutral until you give them a reason to use their empowerment to make the company better. Engagement is the addition of leadership, principles, resources, guidance, training, community, teams and incentives – like the addition of water, sun, fertilizer, and good soil are to growing the apple seed. The seed shows up fully complete and ready to grow, but won’t until it sees the right conditions to do so.

How To Engage People

Engagement requires that we do a very few things right. We must engage everyone in building a clear vision of where we are going, and require that they play a part in creating a plan to live it out.

Engagement also requires that we build an organizational model that encourages distributed decision-making and other forms of participation formerly reserved only for hierarchical managers. And if we expect people to be fully engaged, we need to invite them to have more control over their time, and to be treated like self-managed adults. We also need to be more deliberate about recognition, rewards, relationship-building experiences, and participation in incentives programs directly related to agreed upon results.

The Bottom Line

Empowerment is the absence of the heavy hand; the absence of black plastic over the seed. Engagement is the addition of reasons to get involved – leadership, vision, tools, values, resources, guidance, training, metrics, and relationships. Get out of the way and people will show you how empowered they already are.

Don’t waste time trying to empower people. They already are. Just give them a reason to be engaged, give them the resources they need to grow, and get out of the way. And watch your company take off.

Article as seen on Inc.com

Participation Age Practices: DEG Invites Everyone to Start Something

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Stakeholders as Entrepreneurs

Most companies are mired in the front-office business practices of the Industrial Age. But the Participation Age is a tidal wave breaking over the workplace. How are P-Age companies different? Here’s another example:

We Dig DEG
DEG in Overland Park, Kansas have developed Participation Age Stakeholders, people who can make decisions, take ownership, innovate, and are even encouraged to create entirely new products and services.

Neal Sharma, CEO of DEG, a $20 million digital marketing company with 140 Stakeholders – http://www.degdigital.com/about/, wants everyone to be creating. If you think there is a service the company should add, and they agree, you don’t just get credit for the idea, you’ll end up being the one who builds it.

Let’s Try That
Cara Olson was a Web Strategist who thought the company should expand into email marketing. Sharma told her to go for it. Cara put together a plan and found clients, and today, email marketing at DEG is a $9 million product line, almost half of the company’s revenue. Other Stakeholders followed suit, building social media, copywriting, and other revenue streams and services.

Not all of them succeed – as with any entrepreneurial initiative. But Neal Sharma and DEG understand the value of having people bring the whole, creative person to work, and the company has grown exponentially as a result.

Stakeholders Dig DEG, Too
Following are things the Stakeholders say about DEG as a result of being treated like adults who have great ideas:

– “Our voice is always heard. In our culture, the best idea wins no matter where it comes from.”

– “We have a career lattice instead of a traditional career ladder, which translates to a high degree of internal mobility for us.”

– “If there is something you’re interested in doing and you think there is a market for it, they want you to make the case and go do it. That’s pretty much the story of how we’ve grown.”

– “Everyone receives credit for their work and contributions. We don’t like to have our heroes unsung.”

– “We are given autonomy and the opportunity to make meaningful decisions that affect our business and our clients.”

– “In addition to coffee, our awesome coffeehouse has flat screen TVs, an Xbox, and a fridge full of soda, juice, and more.”

– “Beer:30. How have I not mentioned this yet?”

Participation Age Stakeholders are empowered and encouraged to create, innovate, and take charge. Most importantly, whenever possible, decisions are made by those will have to carry them out. Why would they be made at any other level? DEG gets it, and as a result, they are growing fast and creating a workplace that was voted at the top of best places to work in Kansas City.

Read 124 Reasons to work at DEG – http://bit.ly/1jTSl1t
and some other great quotes by DEG Stakeholders here – http://bit.ly/1hTwz9b*

Don’t Settle – Find One Yourself
Companies of every size, in every industry, are embracing the Participation Age to be more successful. If you are a Stakeholder and want to Make Meaning, not just money, leave your Industrial Age company and go find one (see other examples on this blog). If you want to prepare to do that, or even build one yourself, read “Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea” – http://amzn.to/1n4l1rB