Quotes About Empowerment

We're designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren't when we're clamoring for validation from others, but when we're listening to our own voice-doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

By neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—they limit what each of us can achieve.

This era doesn't call for better management. It calls for a renaissance of self-direction.

The lesson is plain: Speak up. Ask him out. Take that trip. Start that business. Step off the train.

Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time," Collins wrote in Good to Great. "If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?

A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude.

Does your boss allow you to do your best work?

Instead of swirling downward into frustration, "Yes and" spirals upward toward possibility. When you stop you've got a set of options, not a sense of futility.

Sudbury Valley School. Take a look at this independent school in Framingham, Massachusetts

Lead with questions, not answers." "Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion." "Conduct autopsies, without blame." "Build 'red flag' mechanisms." In other words, make it easy for employees and customers to speak up when they identify a problem.

We're born to be players, not pawns.

Type I" behavior, a way of thinking and an approach to business grounded in the real science of human motivation and powered by our third drive—our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Indeed, just consider the very notion of empowerment. It presumes that the organization has the power and benevolently ladles some of it into the waiting bowls of grateful employees. But that's not autonomy. That's just a slightly more civilized form of control.

Autonomy, as they see it, is different from independence. It's not the rugged, go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody individualism of the American cowboy. It means acting with choice—which means we can be both autonomous and happily interdependent with others.

not looking at the student or the patient as a pawn on a chessboard but as a full participant in the game.

For example, researchers at Cornell University studied 320 small businesses, half of which granted workers autonomy, the other half relying on top-down direction. The businesses that offered autonomy grew at four times the rate of the control-oriented firms and had one-third the turnover

ingredients of genuine motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—they

Whether you're fixing sinks, ringing up groceries, selling cars, or writing a lesson plan, you and I need autonomy just as deeply as a great painter. However, encouraging autonomy doesn't mean discouraging accountability. Whatever operating system is in place, people must be accountable for their work.

Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the four T's: their task, their time, their technique, and their team.

The opposite of autonomy is control. And since they sit at different poles of the behavioral compass, they point us toward different destinations. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. And this distinction leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery—the desire to get better and better at something that matters.

But if you instead ask, "Can I make a great pitch?" the research has found that you provide yourself something that reaches deeper and lasts longer

people oriented toward autonomy and intrinsic motivation have higher self-esteem, better interpersonal relationships, and greater general well-being than those who are extrinsically motivated.

richest experiences in our lives aren't when we're clamoring for validation from others, but when we're listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves. So, in the end, repairing the mismatch and bringing our understanding of motivation into the twenty-first century is more than an essential move for business. It's an affirmation of our humanity.

One thirty-three-year-old South African woman spoke for many when she wrote: I regret not having the courage to be more bold earlier in my career and caring too much what other people thought of me.