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through relationships with others than through individual endeavors.
Cooperation, facilitation, and collaboration have taken on more
importance.

Empowerment

The job of a leader is to build a complementary team, where every strength is
made effective and each weakness is made irrelevant. Stephen Covey.

Employee empowerment has become a cliché in many organizations. The
truth of the matter is that many leaders don’t want to share responsibility
with others because they don’t want to lose any of their power. One of the

most difficult tasks that new supervisors face is “giving up” control when
faced with a critical task. Leaders who are competent enablers learn to
think beyond their own interests for the good of the group they are
leading. Unfortunately, many leaders still do not see the direct benefits in
such behavior.
257

It is also clear that organizations cannot simply declare people to be
empowered, and leaders cannot empower people to be innovative or
willing to take risks or to choose courses of action that they are
uncomfortable with. In that respect, individuals have to empower
themselves, because organizational change begins with self-change.

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do
what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with
them while they do it. President Theodore Roosevelt.

An empowered staff is one that is committed to the work of the
organization. Workers enjoy a sense of competency and feel that they are

learning and improving. They are making decisions that most directly
affect them. A feeling of community and of personal significance exists,
and they find meaning in what they are doing. Clearly, if the leadership of

257 Bruce J. Aviolio, Leadership Development in Balance: MADE/Born, Mahway NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates Publishers, 2005, p. 62.

David Kolzow 255