Discussing the concept of “empowerment” with organizational leaders often exposes an interesting dichotomy: While leaders often support empowering teams, they’re occasionally wary of empowering individuals. Empowered teams, the thinking goes, are innovative and agile—but empowered individuals are obstinate and rebellious. So asking senior leaders to invest in efforts to empower individual contributors could potentially sound like a request to equip everyone with a blowtorch and a machete.
