Debunking "Empowerment"

Elephant coming through a veil of gold splatter being cut with gold scissors.

Leading and managing (and directing, for that matter), are not about dominating. I’ve seen way too much organizational abuse of the dominating nature. It is the impetus of many an elephant in the room. The driver is fear, of course.

I am The Elephant Hunter. I hunt and tag the elephant in the room for all to see and free. Together we’ll track it and the suppressed organizational truth it represents. I’ve taken over voicing this blog as my author is busy writing The Elephant Hunter Book Series to share my adventures in the organizational wild™ with you. In case you’re just tuning into this blog, we elephant hunters hunt the elephant in the room by slogging through organizational waste, to map the path of the elephant in the room and determine who wields it and why. Our Elephant Hunter Academy™ Archives are replete with examples of elephants in the room that stem from misuse and abuse of everyday roles and responsibilities within organizations. There’s not much organizational training in the wild and woolly world of work and everyone seems to have their own set of rules that change as the going gets tough.

Employee “empowerment” is a threat to this wishy-washy way because there isn’t a clear and stable ethos to deploy and guide the distribution of decision-making that empowerment rides upon. What there is, in place of such unvarying values, are a rigid set of policies and procedures that contain all organizational effort and eliminate all deviation (and growth). Oof! This is managers trying to fill a leadership void. We elephant hunters call this type of organization an elephant factory. They can’t help it. The most frustrating thing about this situation, we’ve learned, is that dysfunction is created out of caring. That can be quite a mind-bender. Today’s dominating force that thwarts employee empowerment (and the innovation and growth potential associated with it) is now our collective organizational crap (by elephant hunter assessment).

This particular pile of crap began as one or more individual’s crap (the Elephant Hunter “My Crap” Factor) trying to cover for another’s crap (Elephant Hunter “Your Crap” Factor). Dumbfounding, isn’t it? With the best intentions, the perceived needs of the few are replacing the actual needs of the many and those of the organization as a whole. How do we elephant hunters classify this elephant in the room? Enabling dysfunction, it is, but that’s not exactly the elephant trapped here. Not empowering each other with our true perspective is more like it. For if the lack of this type of effective leadership was tagged in the first place—in the beginning—the dominating and stifling policies and procedures would not have been the response. This is at least true in this particular case. Now what? This elephant in the room needs to be tagged.

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