Empowerment is often incorrectly perceived as a binary choice. Either
you empower someone, or you don’t. In reality, your options are more
varied than that. We can distinguish between different levels of authority.
In your first driving lesson, your driving instructor may have given
you the steering wheel, but I’m sure he told you exactly when to go left
and when to go right. After a number of lessons, when you had gained
some experience, he might have said, “Let’s drive to the shopping center
where you almost rammed a phone booth last week,” and it would have
been your job to find a way to get there. And with an experienced driver,
the instructor might have said, “Why don’t you drive around a bit while
I take a nap?”
For each individual activity, we can distinguish seven levels of
authority:
- Level 1: Tell: You make decisions and announce them to your people. (This is actually not empowerment at all.)
- Level 2: Sell: You make decisions, but you attempt to gain commitment from workers by “selling” your idea to them.
- Level 3: Consult: You invite and weigh input from workers before coming to a decision. But you make it clear that it’s you who is making the decisions.
- Level 4: Agree: You invite workers to join in a discussion and to reach consensus as a group. Your voice is equal to the others.
- Level 5: Advise: You attempt to influence workers by telling them what your opinion is, but ultimately you leave it up to them to decide.
- Level 6: Inquire: You let the team decide first, with the suggestion that it would be nice, though not strictly necessary, if they can convince you afterward.
- Level 7: Delegate: You leave it entirely up to the team to deal with the matter while you go out and have a good time (or use that time to manage the system).
