The Psychology Of Management By Empowerment

Forbes

16-04-2025

The American workplace is one grand human experiment in how to organize and motivate human effort.
Within any given industry a dizzying array of management styles coexist from the inspirational to the authoritarian, bureaucratic, and countless variations in between.
Given how fierce competition tends to breed alignment with what works best, it is curious how all of these different management styles manage to stay afloat in the first place.
The fact that there are as many management styles as there are CEOs hints at a deeper fact at play: most are either good enough or not bad enough to sink the ship.
The reason why your local bookstore is shelved with leadership self-help books that offer contradictory guidance draws from this fact. When the vast majority of options do the job, we'll be able to attribute success to 12-hour workdays, holacratic management or whatever else we'd like, particularly when most sages on the stage never systematically measure what they deliver against a control.
None of this means management strategists don't know what they are talking about. In fact, if we peel back enough layers a handful of honest-to-goodness best practices do stand out.
One such practice is empowerment: giving people genuine ownership over their tasks, decisions, and paths forward. Whether it's business, addiction recovery or persuasion, nothing else works quite like it.
Empowerment takes root in a simple yet powerful psychological principle: people are most motivated when they act on their own reasons rather than on external compulsion.
Whether you call it 'intrinsic motivation,' 'self-determination,' or 'buy-in,' the core idea is that humans respond more powerfully when they see personal agency in the task at hand.
Behavioral economists, psychologists and best-selling authors like Robert Cialdini and Michael Pantalon have shown that once you tap into someone's existing reasons for action, however weak they might initially be, they become far more committed to action than if they were simply obeying orders.
Empowerment is rooted in well-established principles of psychology and behavior change, and it has a great deal to do with inspiring leaders, something that Columbia Business School Professor and author of Inspire, Adam Galinsky, knows quite a deal about.
'Inspirational leadership taps into a person's innate drive, their reasons for action, and builds upon that internal motivation to make progress towards shared goals,' Galinsky begins.
'According to my research, truly great leaders come in three universal archetypes; visionaries, exemplars, and mentors. All of these lean heavily on empowerment, and they excel in fostering internal motivation instead of relying on external incentives or coercion,' he continues.
It's no wonder that leaders who empower consistently outperform command-and-control styles on measures like morale, innovation and overall performance.
'Leaders who inspire are in direct contrast with leaders who infuriate, both in how we perceive them in the workplace and what they get out of their staff,' Galinsky notes before explaining how 'becoming a leader who inspires through empowerment is something that is within everyone's grasp, and accomplishable with something as simple as changing our behavior, word choice and presence.'
If this isn't enough to inspire you to believe that empowerment is a leadership superpower, reflect for a moment on how this principle manifests in everyday life: people volunteer for charities and non-profits, they help their neighbors and even join cults to follow charismatic leaders who have found ways to activate their own motivations instead.
We are all willing to give our time and energy, even for free, when the right combination of opportunity, empowerment and inspiration comes along.
Dan Black, the Global Leader of Talent Strategy and Organizational Effectiveness at EY, has witnessed the power of empowerment firsthand, especially among younger employees:
'We've found that Gen Z, in particular, wants to know the why behind every assignment. Including them in the reasoning process pays huge dividends in engagement. They don't just want to be told what to do; they want to see how their work ties into a bigger vision,' Black adds.
It is important to note that fostering empowerment is not simply an item on a checklist that a CEO can cross out after a speech at an onboarding event.
'If you're not involving people in the decision-making process, you risk alienating them. You can't attract and retain top talent if you treat them like cogs in a machine. Empowerment is a far more natural fit for the values of the modern workforce, and it will be incredibly difficult to retain Gen Z talent if CEOs don't get this right,' Black continues.
EY's lessons on empowerment, particularly in connection to the next generation, are earned through hard work in onboarding and rotating through more than 80,000 new employees each year who join the organization, often straight from school.
'When you onboard numbers as big as we do you have to get your processes right,' Black starts, before explaining how 'for EY the apprenticeship model is how people move up, and this model is built on the basis of empowering the apprentice to take control of their career both inside EY and outside of it.'
Another field where apprenticeship models are key is construction, and if you observe closely enough you will find how empowerment is central to how the entire industry operates and grows.
Jeff Wharton is the CEO of Bloomin' Blinds Franchise Corp. which has been family-owned for 20 years: long enough to see how management style can shape a franchise network's culture and resilience.
When Wharton joined Bloomin' Blinds, he stepped into the role of CEO with the explicit aim of scaling a family legacy into a modern franchise system while preserving its personal touch and the empowerment of the franchisees inherent in the operating model.
For Wharton, empowerment is tied to giving employees and franchisees real decision-making capacity, and equipping them with the tools and know-how to make good use of them.
'As the franchise owner we're careful never to simply dump responsibilities on our franchisees. Our task is to make their work as easy and profitable as possible, and there's no other way to accomplish this than to empower them to make their own decisions and run their business like they see best,' Wharton explains.
During its 20 years Bloomin' Blinds has experimented with different ways to empower its franchisees, with AI being front-and-center of these efforts today.
'Our decision-making process always goes back to the client,' Wharton says. 'If our franchisees can use AI to have deeper, longer interactions with the customer, that's empowerment for the customer and for them. It also means I, as CEO, can finalize tasks more quickly and free my time for strategic thinking. The way we approach AI and all of the other tools we use is always about enabling them to elevate what they do best.'
When it comes to empowerment, trust remains a cornerstone that can't be toyed around with.
Wharton notes that working with close family members demands a level of respect and communication that they leverage across the entire franchise ecosystem:
'There are four family members in the owner group. We've developed an incredible level of trust and mutual respect and that enables a culture of empowerment. If we succeed in extending that ethos to every franchisee, most of our work as franchise owners is already done.'
At Patrick Industries, empowerment operates on a much larger scale.
The company boasts over 85 brands, a $4 billion valuation, and a track record of more than 80 acquisitions in 14 years. Yet the CEO, Andy Nemeth, who has been at Patrick for 29 years, believes their success rests on simple KPIs and a decentralized, brand-focused model that banks on empowerment taking the reins.
'We have presidents for each of our markets and they have full authority on the P&Ls for their group,' Nemeth explains.
'What we do at HQ is hold them accountable on daily sales, on-time delivery, quality, and labor metrics. Everything else from innovation, marketing, brand identity is in their hands, with the full support of the Nemeth resources and team behind them.'
For a company that began as a family-run operation and expanded into a publicly traded behemoth, preserving an entrepreneurial spirit is paramount, which is why Andy often reflects on the balance needed between empowerment and control for a company as complex as Patrick Industries to succeed.
Andy acknowledges that stepping in can be a double-edged sword, but sometimes there's no alternative for the CEO's direct presence.
'If I get involved too often, whatever empowerment I have fostered withers away instantly, and customers might bypass the brand leadership and form a habit of escalating directly to me. That kills any motivation that was at the local brand level, and our business leaders want to know both positive and negative feedback directly from their customers. So I defer to the brands, but I'm always there if they need higher-level support in any way,' Nemeth explains.
Andy's almost three decades with the company gives him reason to validate Dan Black's viewpoint at EY: younger generations crave autonomy but also want to be part of something bigger.
'We're deeply embedded in the outdoor enthusiast space and our employees are enthusiasts themselves. The younger ones in particular want to contribute to something they personally enjoy and find meaning in. By empowering them with thoughtful ownership, we leverage that passion for RV'ing, boating, off-roading, or any other outdoor lifestyle experience they value.'
Crucially, the company's leadership also recognizes that AI is reshaping manufacturing, supply chain, and customer engagement:
'AI isn't my specialty,' Nemeth says, 'but I'm watching our experts and team members become more efficient, more innovative, just by leveraging AI tools. For me, it's about encouraging them to explore. That's the best kind of empowerment.'
Despite the infinite variety of management styles swirling in the American workplace, the principle of empowerment repeatedly emerges as a best practice.
Whether it's a 400,000 employee deep consulting firm or a franchisee-led siding company, empowerment is a practical strategy with real-world impact regardless of the context.
For some, empowerment may feel like a risky endeavor, and for good reason as it requires leaders to relinquish some of their control, simplify metrics, and trust their teams. Yet the payoff is substantial: higher engagement, better customer experiences, and a pipeline of future leaders who have already internalized the company's vision.
The more closely we observe leaders who inspire and those who find outsized success it begins to seem like management by empowerment is the gold standard that everyone should be aiming for.