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Recently, however, a shift toward empowering followers has been gathering momentum. Participative management, employee involvement, and self-managing work teams are frequently the banners of contemporary leadership practice. These new perspectives suggest that true leadership may largely reside within each person rather than depending on an external source.
Looked at in this light, perhaps, effective leaders should be judged more on their ability to tap the leadership potential within each person. It also suggests that at the heart of any empowerment effort should be an emphasis on employee self-leadership.
Too often, empowerment is limited to external skill training... Unfortunately, this is frequently not the case. I have observed organization after organization implement self-managed teams or other forms of empowerment and neglect the heart. They provide training emphasizing task skills for performing the work, solving the problems and the like. They also address social skills like conducting meetings, managing conflict, communication, and sometimes even leadership of others.
Rarely do they provide any direct attention to the individual self-leadership skills that are required of employees to successfully perform under the autonomous conditions posed by an empowered work system.
Just as the human body needs a strong heart nourished by a healthy diet and exercise, work systems based on empowerment can benefit greatly by devoting emphasis to strengthening the self-leadership skills of employees--the heart of empowerment.
This article will focus on how to nourish and better support this often neglected heart of empowerment; self-leadership.
WHY SELF-LEADERSHIP?
I remember vividly a wild limousine service ride I once had to an airport in a large US city:
I hung on tight as I was almost thrown from my seat several times as I listened to the driver continually mumble about being late.
I asked the driver what the problem was, and he explained that his company's control system included a three-day suspension without pay for being late for a pickup and he would be late for his next fare if he didn't step on it. In the course of this lurching discussion, he also explained that the same penalty was assessed for an accident, regardless of who's to blame and how minor.
As he attempted to make a left turn, he waited for some slow-walking pedestrians. Squirming in his seat, he...