Making Empowerment Real

Empowerment is at the heart of personal power. 

To understand the concept of self-empowerment, we must first understand the word power that is at the root of the word. For this blog, we want to focus on personal power, not the type of organizational power that is driven by positional influence through coercion or rewards. We want to understand our ability to empower ourselves…to make a difference in our everyday work and lives no matter what is happening in the organization. The opposite of empowerment is victimization which is a difficult way to walk through life without some level of control over our lives. We all know plenty of people who don’t feel enabled to make a difference in their work and end up being frustrated and negative about everything.

Personal Power implies POWER & INFLUENCE either because of your expertise or your ability to inspire and unite others. It’s not about the ability to pressure or push a specific idea or agenda. It is about people finding the support they need that is right for them and their ideas. Empowered individuals are respected and always open to collaboration and enhancing solutions within their communities of influence. It is the ability to understand where and how you can make a difference – discern what you can control or not…even if it is just your own attitude. We may not be able to empower someone else or make someone empowered, but we can support others to empower themselves and find people that will do the same for us!  Hopefully this will enhance a culture or collective mind set where empowerment is respected and expected as an operative value.

What Does Empowerment Look Like?

Empowerment can be a Whole Brain concept. It can be helpful to understand your preferences and strengths from a self-awareness standpoint to begin moving towards an empowered state. It can be aligned like this using the word cloud above:

A Quadrant:  What? What analytical expertise and research can you bring to the table?

B Quadrant: How? How can you embrace change and move a solution forward?

C Quadrant: Who? Who can you ask questions of to understand their thinking perspective?

D Quadrant:  Why? Why should you be curious? WHAT IF this were possible?

Key Takeaways:  What personal empowerment do you bring to situations? It is important to recognize where you can feel empowered to influence and where you need other thinking and support to unite people. A few tips from Masterclass.com offers some ideas on how to get started. First recognize your strengths and use a growth mindset to look at the world around you. Invest in yourself for continually developing your talents and skills. But it is also important to have integrity, stay grounded and out of your ego as well as focus on empowering or supporting others to bring their thinking and strengths to the table.