“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” ― Coco Chanel

1. From Alchemy To Psychology:
The Elements Of
Empowerment
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3. Introduction
• It’s a concept that’s getting a lot of buzz lately, as part of a
recent increase in attention on organizational and workforce
health.
• In fact, empowerment has been linked to some major
organizational benefits: high employee empowerment is a
predictor of high employee engagement (Jose & Mampilly
2014; Stander & Rothman 2010), which we know is a good
predictor of productivity.
• If empowerment predicts engagement, it’s possible that
empowerment is the key leading indicator organizations
have been looking for.
• But how exactly are you supposed to find out if your
employees are empowered? An empowered workforce is
gold for businesses, but figuring out how to measure it can
be a difficult process – like making gold from lead. It’s
basically alchemy.

4. Research Talk
• Tremendous pressure is put on organisations to improve their
performance and increase their competitiveness in the continuously
changing world of work (Ndlovu & Parumasur, 2005).
• The changing world of work is characterised by life-long learning, risk
taking, speed and change, networking and measuring outputs (Wentzel
& Geldenhuis, 2005).
• Employee engagement (May, Gilson & Harter, 2004) and psychological
empowerment (Spreitzer, 1995) are important concepts to consider
when dealing with changes at work and improving performance.
• Psychological empowerment increases employees’ sense of personal
control and motivates them to engage in work, which in turn results in
positive managerial and organisational outcomes (Quinn & Spreitzer,
1997).

5. Research Talk
• Conger and Kanungo (1988) describe empowerment
as a process whereby conditions that foster
powerlessness are identified and removed by
providing efficacy information, thereby enhancing an
employee’s self-efficacy.
• According to Spreitzer (1995), psychological
empowerment refers to an individual’s experience of
intrinsic motivation that is based on cognitions about
himself or herself in relation to his or her work role.
• These cognitions are related to the psychological
states identified by Hackman and Oldham (1980) and
Kahn (1990) that impact on the intrinsic motivation of
employees.
• Greco, Laschinger and Wong (2006) state that it is
reasonable to expect that, if employees experience an
empowering workplace that fosters a fit between their
expectations and their working conditions, they would
be more engaged in their work.
• Engaged employees have a sense of energetic and
effective connection with their work activities and see
themselves as able to deal completely with the
demands of their jobs (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzáles-
Romá & Bakker, 2002).

6. Empowerment
Empowerment can be difficult to define, let alone measure: the word empowerment can be used in
many different contexts. Even in the generally accepted context of organizational psychology,
empowerment refers to the way(s) in which
“someone thinks about, understands, and views their role in the workplace – and that’s pretty all-
encompassing.”

7. Individual
Empowerment
• Individual empowerment allows people to exercise control and increase
self-efficacy.
• Self-efficacy can be described as developing a sense of personal power,
strength, or mastery that aids in increasing one’s capacity to act in
situations where one feels a lack of power. Individual self-efficacy is
sometimes considered a “westernized” or “individualistic” construct
built on the idea that simply having a belief in one’s ability to achieve a
certain outcome is all a person needs for self-empowerment.
• This would imply that an internal belief in oneself is both sufficient and
desirable for changing a one’s life. But change in self-efficacy without
real change in one’s life cannot truly be called empowerment (Cattaneo
& Chapman, 2010).

8. Psychological
Empowerment
• at the individual and group levels requires increased
awareness and understanding of the factors that
influence our lives.
• It is a process by which we become aware of the power
dynamics that occur at multiple levels in our lives.
• This could be something like becoming aware of being
treated differently due to the color of one’s skin, or how
the lack of resources in the community one lives in
affects one’s well-being.
• People then begin to develop skills for gaining control
over relevant aspects of their lives, such as advocating
for themselves or working on coping techniques to
respond to discrimination.
• To truly address all the factors that affect a person’s life,
people’s actions should also be directed toward changing
the conditions of oppression at multiple levels, such as
conditions in the home, at work, or in society.
• These environmental changes can be complemented by
an increase in one’s degree of control over aspects of
one’s own life.
• Psychological empowerment considers the role of the
context and the influences from external factors that
impact the lives of all people (Keys et al., 2017).

9. 4 Elements
Similarly, empowerment can be divided into four elements too: meaning,
competence, self-determination, and impact (Spreitzer 1995):
• whether their role has meaning
• whether they feel competent in their role
• whether they feel that their role allows them some self-determination
• whether they feel they are making an impact
This sounds like a wonderful description of what it means to be
empowered, but we are left with the puzzle of breaking down those four
elements into something that’s actually actionable.
How do we get the true elemental metals from these broad concepts?

10. Becomes 2
There is a myriad of possible approaches,
but let’s zero in on two particularly relevant
psychological concepts:
“locus of control and self-compassion”

11. Locus of Control
• …is the idea that we all feel a certain
degree of control over our lives (Thomas &
Velthouse 1990).
• People with a strong external locus of
control feel that events happen to them
rather than because of them, and that no
matter how they act or what they say, they
will have no impact on their current or
future circumstances.
• Conversely, those with a strong internal
locus of control feel that they play an
agentive role in their own circumstances –
that they have a strong influence on what
happens in their lives, and that their
actions have tangible and meaningful
effects on the world.

12. Internal vs
External
• These loci, like most psychological dimensions, exist on a scale; we
all possess an external and internal locus of control to some extent.
• Many things can influence the relative strengths of a person’s loci
of control, including lifestyle and socioeconomic factors that affect
the amount of control a person actually has on their life and
surroundings.
• This also means that the strength of each locus can be variable
over time as these and other factors change.

13. For Elements 3 and 4
of Empowerment
• Locus of control has previously been linked
to empowerment (Spreitzer 1995).
• Those with a strong internal locus of
control are likely to feel that their actions
have an effect on the world around them –
and generally speaking, they’re right.
• They feel that they’re able to make an
impact in their current role, and that their
role allows them some self-determination
to choose what their day-to-day existence
is like.
• That is, we can use locus of control, a
concept easily measured by psychologists,
as a proxy for elements 3 and 4 of
empowerment – impact and self-
determination.

14. Self-
Compassion
• Often it is self-esteem rather than self-compassion that is linked to
empowerment.
• But self-esteem can be problematic; too much focus on liking
yourself and comparing yourself to others can mean that measures
of high self-esteem are confounded with high levels of narcissism
(Neff 2003; Damon 1995; Finn 1990; Seligman et al. 1995).
• Narcissists, however, do not necessarily have high levels of
empowerment – in fact, there is evidence that they often feel a
sense of insecurity and lack of control (Czarna et al. 2014;
Campbell & Miller 2011; Miller et al. 2013).

15. Self - Esteem?
• Self-compassion, on the other hand, is what we
might actually expect self-esteem to be; it is
defined as “being open to and moved by one’s own
suffering, experiencing feelings of caring and
kindness toward oneself, taking an understanding,
nonjudgmental attitude toward one’s inadequacies
and failures, and recognizing that one’s own
experience is part of the common human
experience” (Neff 2003).
• Self-compassion is correlated with compassion for
others, and as such it is not correlated with being
self-absorbed or inconsiderate of others.
• It is also not related to self-pity; self-pitying
individuals often feel very disconnected from
others (Goldstein & Kornfield 1987), while self-
compassionate individuals feel a sense of
connection to others through a more widespread
tendency toward compassion (Neff 2003).
• Self-esteem is often fragile in the face of criticism –
self-compassion is not (Neff et al. 2007; Neff 2003).

16. for Elements 1, 2 and 3 of
Empowerment
• These findings make self-compassion a very useful
tool for the workplace; employees can receive
constructive feedback while still maintaining their
self-compassion. Likewise, self-compassion allows
an employee to overcome their failures and not be
defined by them.
• Since self-compassion also helps regulate emotions,
it provides people with a sense of stability and
agency over their feelings.
• Self-compassion allows people to feel competent
even when receiving critical feedback, and to feel like
their life and work has meaning via a sense of
connectedness to their environment.
• It allows for a sense of control over feelings and
circumstances, giving us insight into people’s sense
of self-determination as well.
• The concept of self-compassion has also been well-
documented and is easily measured by psychologists,
so we can use it as a well-founded proxy for
elements 1-3 of empowerment.

17. Psychological
Empowerment is a
Motivational Process
• Promoting and facilitating
the impact an individual can
have on their lives and lives of
others around them.
• Building an
individuals' confidence by
helping them accomplish goals,
celebrating victories, and setting
more goals.
• Helping individuals'
find meaning in their life and
work.
• Encouraging individuals' to be
self motivated and self-
determined so that they can
initiate and regulate their own
behaviors.

18. How to Increase
Our Personal
Empowerment
• One of the most important takeaways
from this new model is that identifying
goals that promise a higher likelihood
of success can be vitally important to
any empowerment process.
• In addition, being able to acquire the
necessary skills to attain these goals
can make a huge difference in how
quickly and successfully the
empowerment process proceeds.
• One of the easiest and most accessible
ways we can apply these lessons and
gain empowerment is by pursuing a
meaningful complaint.

19. The 6 Steps to
Personal
Empowerment
• Cattaneo & Chapman define personal
empowerment as "...a process in which a
person who lacks power sets a personally
meaningful goal oriented toward
increasing power, takes action toward that
goal, and observes and reflects on the
impact of this action, drawing on his or her
evolving self-efficacy, knowledge, and
competence related to the goal.“
• Cattaneo & Chapman lay out 6 steps in the
process of attaining personal
empowerment.
• Let's illustrate these steps by applying
them to the pursuit of a consumer
complaint.

20. 1. Identify a Power-
Oriented Goal
• The idea is to increase our level of
influence at any level of social interaction,
either with another person, a group or a
system.
• When pursuing a consumer complaint we
in essence are doing battle with a business,
a company or a corporation.
• Winning the battle by attaining the result
we want is a significant demonstration of
our social influence.
• When we address a complaint to a friend
or loved one and resolve it successfully, we
are having an impact on a relationship that
is both meaningful and highly significant to
our lives.

21. 2. Knowledge
• To attain our goal we need an understanding of
the system involved, the power dynamics we
might encounter, the resources we will require
and a plan of action.
• My book The Squeaky Wheel has all the
information one needs to pursue complaints
effectively both with loved ones and as
consumers.
• It lays out clear guidleines for complaining
effectively to spouses, friends, and teenagers.
• It specifies what to know when calling customer
service hotlines, how to manage our emotions in
such situations and how to construct effective
complaints that will elicit best efforts from the
service representative.
• It also discusses how to escalate complaints to
company executives.

22. 3. Self-efficacy
• To take action we must first believe
we can accomplish our goal.
• Acquiring the knowledge and skill set
necessary to pursue our complaints
and having a variety of effective
complaining tools at our disposal can
make all the difference in the world
to our confidence and feelings of self-
efficacy.

23. 4. Competence
• The better our skills the greater our
competence. Putting our newly
acquired complaining skill set into
action will quickly give us information
about where we are strongest and
which skills or competencies need work.
• Pursuing complaints with loved ones
requires delicacy and the right
techniques, both of which can be
improved through practice.
• Complaining to companies and business
can take persistence and here too, the
more efforts we make, the more we
learn, the higher our level of
competence becomes.

24. 5. Action
• The process of empowerment is a dynamic
one where we act, reflect, assess, and act
again.
• When complaining to a loved one, we
should try out our skill set by addressing
small and less meaningful complaints first
(for example, a complaint about an
incomplete house chore, or a specific
episode of lateness).
• We might have an exchange with a
customer service representative that does
not resolve our problem but gives us
important information we can use when
speaking to a supervisor later on or when
escalating a complaint to company
executives.

25. 6. Impact
• Personal empowerment can be hard earned and in a sense, it
should be if we wish to change how we feel deep within.
• Not all our efforts will yield results right away.
• The process of empowerment is just that, a process and not an
overnight metamorphosis.
• The more meaningful our social influence, the more
empowered we will feel.

26. All these findings give us
a great way to make
sense of empowerment
• by combining measures of self-compassion and
locus of control, we have the means to
measure the extent to which our employees
feel that their role has meaning, that they are
competent, that they possess self-
determination, and that they are making an
impact.
• And that’s one way to turn lead into gold.

28. Learning and
Giving for
Better
Indonesia
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