Empowerment, a Word that is Losing its Power
Beyond Empowerment
If there is a word that is popular in management talks and publications these days, it is the word empowerment. It has become widely used, in the last decade or so, not only in management but also across a wide range of other disciplines. Yet, in practical terms, it reveals a floating concept glossing over ambiguity. In fact, when you start questioning people around, you hear that it means different things in different organizations and, further, it means different things to different people within these organisations. The Oxford English Dictionary defines empowerment as “the action of empowering; the state of being empowered” and it was first used in this form in 1849.
With no satisfying equivalent, the term resists translations into languages other than English that gave birth to it. French is no exception with inaccurate or somewhat curious translations such as « autonomisation », « habilitation », « pouvoir d’agir », « capacitation », « empouvoirisation » or « empouvoirement. »
In order to better understand what empowerment really means, I invite you to look at its etymology.
Empowerment is of French and Latin derivation consisting of:
• the prefix -em- that probably comes from the old French for -en-. The Latin source of -em- stands for “to look” or “to come” conveying a sense of movement and direction;
• the radical power;
• the suffix -ment- that carries the dimension of a process (for gaining power).
Paradoxically, the important piece in the term empowerment is not what seems a priori obvious or seductive, namely the word power, but rather the tiny and inconspicuous particle -em-. Let’s zoom in on it and see what are the invisible stakes and dynamics of a prefix that leads to more complexity than it first looks like.
As its etymological meaning implies, the particle -em- makes me wonder where that power comes from.
Where the hell do you expect power to come from? In most of our societies, it is normalized that power comes from outside-in: a community leader, your boss, just like the above comments from the web suggest it. As often, we interestingly look for responses externally rather than within. This presumes that the one who empowers has the power to begin with and grants it to the other, which reinforces the paradigm of power and control to which the other person is subject. This power imbalance raises the question of domination, which is is in total contradiction with the very idea most of us have of empowerment. Hmmm… Houston, we have a problem!
In fact, the above construct of empowerment sounds like a delegation of power more than a real letting go of power with actual and granted authority. And I find it particularly tickling because of:
- the sneaky notion of dependency that sticks with this form of empowerment — you can't help an Aquarius with the sacredness of her(his) freedom! A dependency that somewhat recalls the role dynamics in the drama triangle which I explained here in a previous article
- the appearance of empowerment, without actual power, which is exquisitely illustrated in the quote below:
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."
How empowered are we if we are relying on someone to eat every single day? How liberated are we if we can’t choose our freedom? So how do we reconcile this inherent paradox on empowerment embedded not only in discourse but also in practice? How do we shift from feeding to teaching someone how to feed her(him)self?
The solution must lie in perspectives on empowerment from an unconventional view. What if power would come from, not a person…but the system itself someone belongs to? What if people had all the power at their disposal from the very moment they join an organization regardless of their level of responsibility?
Only appropriate developments in the power structure of an organization can lead to such actual empowerment and liberation. Only self-managing organizations have that potential to lead to such a new order. In fact, in self-managing organizations, leaders do no longer need to empower others: everyone is fully vested with power by the very design of such an organization. Self-management power is not delegated but fully distributed.
In the end, the magic of empowerment — which might not be the panacea we’d like to think of — rather comes from the power shift from empowering people to empowering the environment or the system in which people within can choose to emancipate in order to become agents of their own empowerment (with possibly some appropriate extra support needed). This may be what it means to go beyond empowerment. I let you imagine what and how it would look like in your own organization or community, if not yet. Sweet dreams ✨✨
☞ I was inspired to write this piece thanks to the book Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization by Doug Kirkpatrick, which I read the title only so far. But it reminded me of interesting old conversations I had with my friends Krista Kujat and Brian Robertson.
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