"empowerment" is a disempowering concept

[Harrison Owen]

At 10:28 PM 5/12/2002 +0200, Koos wrote:

>So what I am saying is that the concept of empowerment has to do with one
>person or entity giving power to another person or entity. As in: the
>management of this company empowers the employees. This sounds nice, but it
>is awful. And it is not what we do when we Open Space for these people. At
>least not in my system. Giving power assumes that there is something to be
>given (which means it can also be withheld) and there is an entity that has
>the ability to do the giving (or the withholding). I question these
>assumptions.
>
>What we do when we Open Space is invite people into a paradigm shift. This
>paradigm shift also concerns power. Open Space means the end of power and
>control as we knew it. Open Space invites people to experience the power
>they already have. There is no such thing as control. There are just people
>who think they are in control and others who accept that thinking. This
>deadly embrace of wrong thinking (which, by the way, can be very
>comfortable) is what we invite people to throw out the window.
>
>Talking of empowerment is staying in the old power paradigm. If we want to
>honor the paradigm shift we are making, we do not talk about empowerment.
>We do not give the power to the people, because we know it is already there.

Interesting Thought Koos -- and one I have had many times myself. As I have
often said -- "If I empower you ... guess who is powerful?" But i rather
suspect that the problem lies not with "empowerment" but with the presumed
source. In all the years of Open Space, one of the continuing experiences
has been that of people experiencing their own power and worth. Perhaps we
should call that self-empowerment?  I definitely agree with your statement,
" the management of this company empowers the employees. This sounds nice,
but it is awful." Not only does it sound awful, it is (in my opinion)
delusional on the part of the company and the employees. As you point out,
it is actually a conspiracy, or as I prefer -- yet another example of The
Emperor's Clothes. The old dude is actually buck naked, but everybody --
for reasons of their own -- dress him well in their imagination.

Harrison





Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm

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