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the best ideas

In business, we often hear people talk about “empowerment.”  The idea is simple: as a leader, you have given power and discretion to your followers to make decisions on their own.  Rather than becoming a bottleneck, an empowering leader allows the gifts and talents of his or her team to flow throughout the organization.

How can you tell when empowerment is happening?  One symptom that empowerment is a value and not just a buzzword is this: not all the best ideas belong to the leader.  This not only relieves the leader of having to be an idea factory, it also allows the team to grow and expand.

The opposite of empowerment is control.  Are there things that a leader must control?  Absolutely.  But not everything.

Where do the best ideas in your organization come from?