Hello everyone,
I just wanted to explain why I have not added any new posts for a couple weeks. I am in the middle of writing a new course in Ethics for Mid-South Christian College that I will be teaching beginning in January. This has occupied all of my time and, quite frankly, all of my writing energy. So, I’ve put the blog on hold temporarily. I plan to get back to regular posts in January, after my family and I return from visiting Dawn’s family in upstate NY. Please check back around January 11.
Thanks for your patience,
Greg Waddell
I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY to share some thoughts on my favorite Christmas hymn, Oh Holy Night. The words for the hymn were written by Placide Chappeau, an elderly merchant and mayor of Roquemaure, France. It was his custom to write poems for personal enjoyment and thus he wrote this beloved classic. I believe his words capture the heart of the meaning of Christmas. I find particularly moving the profound the first stanza.
Oh, Holy Night. The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!
The third line aptly describes the world without Christ as well it does the lives of those who have not yet allowed Him into their lives. The verb to pine has two distinct yet related meanings. First it means “to yearn deeply” for something, to long for something painfully. Second, it means to gradually fail in health and vitality (Dictionary.com). The author is describing the state of a world that feels a deep yearning for a better existence. We inherently know that life was meant to be different, that something’s wrong, and that somehow the world is not as it was intended to be.
In the Old Testament, we find a prophecy written 700 years before the birth of Christ that describes the condition of life in the regions surrounding the Sea of Galilee, the place where Jesus Christ would grow up and where He would begin His ministry. The prophet Isaiah describes this region as living in a state of gloom and anguish, a place that was treated by others with contempt, and a place where the people walked in darkness (Isaiah 9:1-1). In other words, it was a world in sin and error pining.
Isaiah’s prophecy, however, reaches beyond the characteristics of a geographic region; like Chappeau, Isaiah has captured in words the essence of the human condition. But also like the hymn writer, Isaiah sees the healing effect of one whose life would cause the very soul of man to “feel its worth.” For “the people who walk in darkness will see a great light” and “those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them” (Isaiah 9:2). Their gladness will increase; they will rejoice; and their yoke of oppression will be broken” (Isaiah 9:3-4). As a result of the coming of Christ, a new and glorious morning has broken upon the earth.
Yet, many will be quick to point out that oppression, error, anguish, and gloom continue to be a real part of our world. Yes! But the Savior has pointed the way to a glorious new existence. In fact, He IS that way for all who would hear Him and follow Him.
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In the next several posts I will focus on empowerment FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FOLLOWER. Just as a philosophy of empowerment assumes that leaders behave in certain ways, it also implies that employees will behave in a self-empowering way. In particular, the literature stresses that the empowered follower develops skills in (1) open communication, (2) working in teams, (3) listening to the voice of wisdom, (4) having tolerance with ambiguity, (5) encouraging oneself, and (6) accepting personal responsibility. These six behaviors are the choice that an employee must make if he or she is to experience empowerment (Honold, 1997, p. 204). Let’s now consider the first of these choices: the choice to own up to one’s ideas and opinions.
The following scenario may be familiar to you. You have heard rumors among your peers about ways to improve the organization. Some of these ideas would require major changes in the way things are processed. They may involve ways to overcome bureaucratic bottlenecks that, while apparent to everyone else, go unnoticed by the top leadership of the organization. Finally, you get tired of hearing these things in the unofficial encounters of the workplace and decide to bring some of them to the table at one of your regular staff meetings. You are surprised and disappointed, however, when you find that you are the only one giving voice to these ideas. All those who were so vociferous outside the meeting clam up during the meeting and you are left as the only one talking. This is not an empowering atmosphere.
One of the prerequisites for becoming an empowered employee is the practice of open communication. There are some individuals whom we will simply not be able to empower because they lack this essential ingredient. There are several reasons why this is so. The point here is that empowerment is not totally the product of the leader. It also demands certain behaviors and attitudes on the part of the would-be empowered employee. Not only must the leader empower others; others must also be willing to be empowered.
When people are closed in their communication style–reserving their true opinions and ideas for themselves–they are likely to be perceived by others as distant or even untrustworthy. This will make it more difficult for superiors to trust them and to cede power to them. Ultimately, a leader’s concern for the overall health of the organization and the achievement of its goals supersedes the concern for the development of individuals. Organizations are not just in the business of developing people, but also of producing results. This goes for the church as well. Jesus commanded His church to go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations. This cannot be achieved if the church focuses entirely on developing people and forgets her responsibility to produce results. How can leaders trust the integrity of the organization to those whose true opinions are not readily exposed?
People who keep their ideas to themselves are also inhibiting their own creative potential. A central component of empowerment is the freeing up of the creative potential that resides within every human being, a potential that is the product of our being created in the image and likeness of God. Employees may feel overwhelmed by change and momentarily shut down their capacity to receive new information (Von Krogh. Ichijo. & Nonaka, 2000, pp. 19-20) or it may be that nobody has ever taught them how to look at the world in new and creative ways (Bell, 2003, p. 77). When a person is empowered, he or she is liberated from these constraints and experiences the courage to learn new things and take on new challenges. This ability to innovate and create is vital to successful empowerment.
People who want to be empowered need to be open with their ideas. For this to happen, they need to rid themselves of the constraints that keep them from sharing their thoughts freely. The opposite of openness is a state of fear that causes people to withhold their ideas and true opinions. To become self-empowered, individuals must be willing to put their thoughts out on the table, to expose them to scrutiny. They must learn how to own up to their own ideas, assumptions, biases and fears and help others to do the same (Argyris & Schön, 1996, p. 117). The workplace climate may suffer from resistance to ideas that challenge the leader’s perspective. In this case, the problem lies with the leader. Structural bottlenecks may also inhibit ideas from coming to the attention of anyone who is able to make a decision in response to the idea. What this post is primarily concerned with, however, are the constraints that lie within the individual himself or herself. To become an empowered worker, one must develop the capacity for transparency.
It is vital, however, that we understand that such openness cannot be forced. Our ideas are one of the few domains that are completely within the individual’s power to withhold or to disseminate. Openness can be coaxed forth with the aid of a corporate atmosphere of transparency. It can also be modeled by the leader and encouraged by the organizational structure. Ultimately, however, openness is a choice.
It is a choice that must be made by the empowered. Some people simply choose to remain anonymous with their true opinions. For some, the sharing of ideas and thinking in general does not fit their mental model of what an employee does. I vividly recall an exchange in Argentina that illustrates this point. I was trying to involve others in the decision-making process by including them in a planning meeting for a special church event. After the meeting, one man came up to me and gave me some advice. He said, “You’re the leader. You need to make the decisions. Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it; but don’t make us have to think so much.” For this man, including others in the decision making process and the sharing of his ideas about how to improve things was simply not the way leaders and followers interact. For others, the problem lies in their inner conflicts and self-doubts. They simply are unable to overcome their fear of failure, rejection, or ridicule.
The ability to be transparent about oneself and ones ideas is fundamentally a spiritual matter. The apostle Paul makes this point in his second epistle to the Corinthians. In chapter three of that epistle, Paul argues that he and his fellow apostles are ministers of a New Covenant, a covenant that is different from the Old Covenant in that it encourages transparency. To illustrate this, Paul puts forth the example of Moses. Tradition tells us that after having spent considerable time in the presence of God on Mount Sinai, Moses’ face was transformed. It had a glow about it that was evident to all the people. The problem, however, was that the glow (or glory, to use the biblical term) faded with time. To cover up the fading glory, Moses put a veil over his face. Paul contrasts his ministry with that of Moses. He writes:
Having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, and are not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. . . . Whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (vv. 12-13, 16-18).
Of course, there is a profound theological meaning in Paul’s words. He is talking about the transformation that takes place as an individual lives in direct communion with God through the Spirit, a transformation that, rather than fading, increases with time. But an important effect of this transformation is that we are empowered to be transparent with who we are and what we think. We are no longer bound by the fears that inhibit open communication.
There exists a clear linkage between trust, transparency, and empowerment. Trust enables leaders to give away power. It is also linked to organizational learning because it creates a climate where learning can take place. An atmosphere of trust gives groups what Rosen, Digh, Singer, and Phillips (2000) refer to as “the capacity to learn in real time around the table” (p. 287) as ideas are owned and challenged through honest and fair dialogue. This is not always comfortable but it is necessary for empowerment to take place at the organizational level.
Questions for Reflection
(1) What are some examples from your organizational experience that illustrate the point that open communication enhances empowerment? (2) What are some additional factors that keep people from sharing their thoughts? (3) What is the relationship between empowerment and creativity? (4) How can you as a leader encourage others to be more open with their ideas and concerns?
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Works Cited
Argyris, Chris, and Donald A. Schön. Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, & Practice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996.
Bell, Wendell. “Foundations of Futures Studies: History, Purposes, and Knowledge.” In Human Science for a New Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003.
Honold, Linda. “A Review of the Literature on Employee Empowerment.” Empowerment in Organisations 5, no. 4 (1997): 202-12.
Rosen, Robert, Patricia Digh, Marshall Singer, and Carl Phillips. Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Von Krogh, Georg, Kasuo Ichijo, and Ikujiro Nonaka. Enabling Knowledge Creation: How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge & Release the Power of Innovation. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible(R), Copyright (C) 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.