Leadership and Employee Empowerment: Freeing Employees' Psychological Rights to Grow on the Job
Kay Payne
Joseph P. Cangemi
Harold E. Fuqua
Rhonda Muhlenkamp
DOI: 10.2190/JM4G-RQ5N-L5RY-2F42
Abstract
The transformation of the American business landscape since the turn of the century from an agrarian society to an industrial environment, to a technological and scientific service environment staggers the imagination. Producing more highly educated employees, plus an increasingly complex and competitive environment has caused organizations to rethink their former strategies of leadership. Leaders now must empower their employees, authorizing and enabling them to do their jobs. Empowered employees need to plan their own work. They require the tools necessary to do their jobs; they need to be given discretionary decision making authority to do their work. Visionary leaders create an environment which enable employees to experience support, training, shared authority, and decentralized decision making. Visionary leaders communicate highly important and desirable values of high quality, good service, and general excellence. As leaders and members operate in an empowered culture they express trust between one another through open communication. Effective communicators use an open style, understand effective procedures for conducting problem solving and decision making meetings, and effectively listen to understand and provide feedback. These aspects of empowered organizations usually facilitate employee satisfaction, improved quality and higher productivity.
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