Motivate Performance through Empowerment.

In the management literature, empowerment is commonly associated with a set of managerial techniques or the act of sharing power with others. More specifically, empowerment can be defined as a psychological state where four cognitions of the individual (meaning, competence, choice, impact) act in concert to foster a proactive, positive, and self-confident orientation towards one's work. To best understand empowerment, it is important to view notions of power and control from a psychological perspective.The actual process of empowerment can be viewed along six stages that include the psychological state of an empowering experience, its antecedent conditions, and its behavioral consequences. Empowerment interventions must take into careful consideration the individual, their personal assessments, and the task. To understand how empowerment works in the real world, the authors look at two positive examples and one negative example. The examples are Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, Jack Welch of General Electric, and Frank Borman of Eastern Airlines.