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Empowering Employees

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Empowering Employees

McGraw-Hill,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Power is an infinite resource only if you share it.

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Editorial Rating

5

Recommendation

At its best, Empowering Employees by Kenneth L. Murrell and Mimi Meredith illustrates the vogue concept of worker empowerment as it relates to real-life business, devoid of the touchy-feely clichés such nomenclature may evoke. The book cannot completely avoid a collapse into idealism and jargon however, and long sections of several chapters amount to cheery descriptions of the motivated and satisfied employees that empowerment will breed. These breezy passages fortunately are grounded by examples of companies like Toyota and AT&T that have embraced empowerment - or portions of it - to great success. So if employee-burnout is an issue in your office, or if you are looking for an easy-to-digest explanation of one of today’s most popular management trends, getabstract recommends this book to you.

Summary

The Empowering Manager

In an article for Organizational Dynamics, Robert Quinn and Gretchen Spreitzer enumerated the common characteristics of empowered employees, no matter what their jobs or where they work:

  • Self-determination - The freedom to decide how to do their jobs.
  • A sense of meaning - Their work matters and they care about it.
  • A sense of competence - They’re able to do their jobs.
  • A sense of impact - They can make a difference and others will listen to them.

In an empowering organization, managers and leaders believe that leadership comes from all employees, not just a few who run departments or have corporate titles. Since information is power, empowering managers share information with their employees. To empower, you must act. Empowerment is enabling the growth of individuals and organizations as they add value to the products or services the organization delivers to its customers. Empowerment also relies upon your managerial support of continuous learning and discovery.

Empowering is not about hogging power for yourself. Empowering is:

  • The creative distribution of power.
    • <...

About the Authors

Ken Murrell , professor of Management and Management Information Systems at the University of West Florida, is an international consultant, a community activist and empowerment pioneer. He’s worked with the World Bank, the U.N. Development Program, the U.S.I.A., and firms of all sizes including Motorola, Pfizer, BellSouth and Toyota. He taught around the globe, and consulted in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East. Mimi Meredith owns Wordsmiths Unlimited, where she writes, edits and designs public relations materials, training manuals and books. She has a master’s degree in computer science, worked as a social worker and a trainer, and spent five years as research associate at the University of West Florida’s Educational Research and Development Center.

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    J. T. 1 year ago
    La confianza es esencial para mejorar las relaciones..
    Tener una buena comunicación y hacerse muy responsable de las actividades para que haya una mayor productividad.
  • Avatar
    J. T. 1 year ago
    La confianza es esencial para mejorar las relaciones..
    Tener una buena comunicación y hacerse muy responsable de las actividades para que haya una mayor productividad.
  • Avatar
    N. J. 3 years ago
    needed the audio visual here