Strategy #8: Move from empowerment to self-empowerment

All across America, there are people sitting in their cubicles (at least metaphorically speaking) waiting for someone to empower them, complaining that nobody ever does empower them, and hoping that no one ever tries to empower them. The truth is that nobody can empower you but you. If your manager can give you “empowerment,” that manager can also take that power away. But once you have empowered yourself, it’s a permanent state of mind; you can give it away, but nobody can take it away. Someone might be able to take your job away, but they can never take away your power, once you’ve given it to yourself. Real empowerment is an inside job. And if you don’t see yourself as being an already-empowered individual, you are probably not going to be empowerable, even were someone to try.

Take The Pledge: The surest road to self-empowerment is internalizing the seven simple promises of The Self-Empowerment Pledge. It will change your life – as a parent, as a professional, and as a human being. It’s quite simple (though not necessarily easy). Each day of the week, you make that day’s promise to yourself at least four times (it takes about 15 seconds to make one promise, so I’m only asking you for about one minute a day – about the time you’d waste watching a single TV commercial)  If you do this conscientiously, you will find a gradual and ineluctable transformation of your own attitudes and habits.

To share The Pledge with your team, go to www.Pledge-Power.com. You can read instructions, print out copies of the mini-poster that’s printed above, read stories about the promises, and download all seven tracks from the audio CD.

A great idea:  Print out copies of The Self-Empowerment Pledge for everyone in your area of responsibility.  Call a meeting to review this.  Ask people if their lives would be different (i.e. better) if they were to truly internalize and act upon these seven simple promises.  If they say yes (they will), give them that one-minute-per-day challenge.  Then post The Pledge everywhere as a ubiquitous reminder.  The daily promises make a terrific screen saver!

Important note:  Self-empowerment does not mean “do your own thing.”  Quite to the contrary.  Truly empowered people are serious team players, because they’re more interested in results than in making themselves stand out, and they know that in today’s complex world, achieving great results requires the efforts of a whole team.

“The leader’s role is not to take responsibility so much as to invest it.  Leaders must build subordinates who take responsibility for their own actions and are capable of independent action.  That is the real sense of empowerment – not just a freedom to do one’s job but the freedom to define it.  Empowerment is not about ‘power’ at all; it is about responsibility.  It derives from a sense of responsibility without which the whole notion of empowerment is as meaningless as it is dangerous.”

Gordon R. Sullivan and Michael V. Harper: Hope is not a Method: What Business Leaders Can Learn from America’s Army

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