Multiple Pathways to Empowerment
It would seem that any effective empowerment must ultimately incorporate a wide range of strategies and tools that impact on the structures, processes and attitudes of individual employees, work groups and the overall organization. Everyone seems to agree that these conditions are necessary. But they are not sufficient! The key to empowerment lies not only in the ways in which people work together, but also in the manner by which individuals and groups specifically work within one of the three domains: the domain of ideas. Empowerment concerns ideas. It concerns the creation of settings and the development of individual and group capacities to work with ideas. Empowerment exists when ideas are being freely generated. It exists when ideas are being discussed and tested out. In particular, empowerment exists when differences in opinion regarding ideas are not just tolerated. Differences are actually welcomed as the basis for expanded dialogue and further development of a solution or new program.
I cannot begin to review all the many ways in which empowerment can be engendered in an organization. Blanchard, Scott and Jaffe, and Bennis offer many valuable suggestions. For this appreciative perspective on empowerment, I have had to choose between a focus on the empowerment of individual employees and the empowerment of groups. Given the recent emphasis on group empowerment[ix] and the increasingly important role that groups play in the contemporary, postmodern organization, I have chosen to focus on the group rather than the individual. Most of the concepts and tools being presented, however, are readily translated into individual actions.
I start in the following essays with a brief review of the literature on group functioning and focus on the stages of group development that underlie the creation of an appreciative group. I then turn to several general suggestions concerning group leadership, roles and evaluation, and identify four building blocks for group empowerment.
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