One of the most dangerous misunderstandings of empowerment is that it requires leaders to be less engaged with their teams. This is simply not the case.
Let me be clear: People are not empowered by your absence. People are empowered by your presence.
I appreciate that nobody wants to be labeled a micromanager. And if you’ve ever had a boss that was meddlesome or mistrusting, I can understand why a more hands-off approach might feel like a better approach. But I’m here to tell you that if you think your job as a leader is to “hire great people and get out of the way”, you’re unlikely to have a truly empowered team. True empowerment is an active, deliberate practice built on three essential components: guidance, resources, and support.
Empowerment begins with clear guidance. Your team needs to understand not just what to do, but why it matters and how success is defined. Vague direction doesn't create freedom; it creates anxiety and wastes energy on deciphering expectations rather than meeting them. Providing clear and thoughtful guidance isn’t constraining – it creates the boundaries within which creativity and initiative can flourish. It is like putting the boards around a hockey rink, allowing your players to skate fast and play hard.
Dilbert Comic Strip
The second element of genuine empowerment is ensuring that your team has the resources they need to be successful. This means appropriate time, budget, personnel, and authority. Few things are more frustrating, and ultimately disempowering, than being assigned responsibility without the corresponding resources. Scarcity and austerity don’t magically create resourcefulness and ingenuity, but they might lead to disengagement.
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of empowerment is ongoing support. The passive “my door is always open” approach puts the burden on the teams to determine when and how to seek help. It creates the conditions where asking for support feels like an admission of inadequacy rather than a normal part of the work process. The best support is proactive. It means regular check-ins, thoughtful questions, and being genuinely present. Supporting our people means picking them up and dusting them off when they make an honest mistake. It means providing counsel when they come up against something unexpected. And critically, it means standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them when real challenges arise.
Finding the sweet spot between micromanagement and abandonment isn’t always easy, but that is the work of the leaders because that is where empowerment lives. When your team knows you've provided clear direction, necessary resources, and will be there to support them through challenges, they gain the confidence to apply initiative and take appropriate risks.
Remember: your engaged presence isn't the opposite of empowerment—it's what makes empowerment possible
