I love the idea of empowerment. Selfishly, it means that I get to use my own judgment to decide the best course of action in my own world. Terrifyingly, it means letting my team use their own judgment to decide the best course of action in their worlds. [As an aside, my team is fantastic and has shifted my feelings about this process from terrifying to merely unnerving but any difficulties are very much a me problem.]
But empowerment cannot be only about independent judgment. In its most complete form, it must mean allowing others to tell you no. If it does not give others the ability to say no to orders from above when those orders are not correct, then the entire concept of empowerment is fiction.
Many managers find the idea of people telling them no disturbing. They often feel they neither have the time for debate nor the energy to explain why they are in fact right. But this is just a coating over the reality that they do not have the patience to hear a differing opinion nor the time to understand the issue more fully. Those responsible for carrying out directions often understand the impact of their actions better than those above them.
In hand with this is the fact that not letting dissent through means that you are no longer learning or teaching. An empowered no can come from many places. It may mean the employee is nervous about being blamed for some negative outcome and a reassuring word can carry them past it. It could come from an understanding of unintended consequences that leads to a different way of delivering the request. Or the no could be from a misunderstanding of the request entirely; that the request was not understood and cannot be carried out as desired because there is a disconnect. In most of these examples, taking some extra time leads to better outcomes for both the manager and the employee.
Empowerment cannot be just a theoretical concept. It is either encouraged and reinforced or it is not. There is no middle ground. Many managers say they empower their people while deploying actions that do the opposite.