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Control vs. Empowerment
Because their
employees often do not understand what is expected of them,
ineffective managers learn from their experience to supervise them
closely and not to delegate much authority to them.
Their employees, in turn, are five times more likely than the
employees of the most effective managers to report that they have not
been given the authority they need to achieve the results expected of
them. They also state in
their Management Practices Survey responses that they do not have the
freedom needed to perform their work the way they believe is best.
As a consequence, they do not have a strong sense of
responsibility for the results that are achieved.
It is interesting,
perhaps more accurately, depressing to note that when ineffective
managers recognize that they are overcontrolling their employees and
decide to “empower” them by delegating more authority to them,
results usually get worse. This
occurs because these employees usually lack the skills required to act
independently and continue to be unsure about what is expected of
them. Their plight is
worsened by the fact that their managers have not learned from their
experience how to delegate effectively.
Consequently, these employees are three times more likely than
employees of the best managers to report that they do not get timely
information on the results of their efforts and are rarely given
adequate feedback on their performance.
Since experience has not taught their managers how to delegate
authority and responsibility effectively, these unfortunate employees
are not empowered, but rather are expected to perform in the vacuum of
abdication.
When D managers
discover that the employees to whom they have delegated increased
authority are not able to produce the expected results, they typically
take back their authority and again micro-manage these employees. Their experience thus confirms their belief that their
employees cannot be trusted and they again require their employees
excessively to get approval before taking action.
Their experience teaches them to do the same things that made
them ineffective in the first place.
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Introduction
The
Right
and Wrong
Lessons
Working
Relations
Guidance
and Direction
Control
vs.
Empowerment
Getting
Worse with
Experience
Tolerating
Poor
Management
Performance
Teaching
Ineffective
Managers Prompting
Managers
On The Job Evaluating
Managerial
Leadership
Improvements |
