Defining Empowerment LO7680

Dr. Gilbert Brenson Lazan (gbrenson@openway.com.co)
Thu, 30 May 1996 09:03:19 -0400

Replying to LO7662 --

Good morning all:

I have been following with considerable interest and with some concern the
threads regarding empowerment. The different specific definitions may well
depend on the contextualization of the concept, but what is disturbing to
me is what I perceive as a linguistic distortion and its negative impact
on individual and group behavior.

In the first place, there is an alarming tendency to nominalize the
concept and use a noun ("empowerment") instead of a verb ("empower",
"empowering"). I perceive empowering as an evolutionary process and not as
a static "thing" or a specific behavior. It's interesting that in Spanish
the noun "power" and the verb "to be able to" are the same word: "poder".

In the second place, when many people do use it as a verb, they use it as
a transitive verb with a direct object, something that someone does to
someone else: "A manager should empower his/her organization". I see it
as a reflexive verb, something I do to myself and/or facilitate that other
individuals or systems do to themselves. IMNSHO, this type of linguistic
manipulation is what has so distorted the subject and application of
motivation.

I firmly believe that I can only motivate myself and empower myself. We
can all facilitate those processes in others. The beginning of
"empowerment" is to empower our use of the word and the semantic
connotations that results from such use.

I'd love to hear other opinions.

Best wishes,

Gil
###########################################################################
FUNDACION NEO-HUMANISTA

Dr. Gilbert Brenson Lazan, Executive Director

FACILITATING GREATER INSTITUTIONAL EMPOWERMENT AND EFFECTIVENESS
WITH AND FOR LATIN AMERICA'S THIRD SECTOR

e-mail: gbrenson@openway.com.co s-mail: Apartado Aereo 50717
Tel: (571)345-2724 Santafe de Bogota, Colombia
###########################################################################

-- 

"Dr. Gilbert Brenson Lazan" <gbrenson@openway.com.co>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>