Delegation vs Empowerment

To delegate means to choose or elect a person to act as a representative for another.  To empower someone means to give power or authority to someone else.  Do you hear the difference?  To delegate something to someone is to only give them enough leash to act on your behalf-as you would for yourself.  To empower another means you give them enough power and authority to act on their own behalf.

This is not good versus bad.  There is a proper time for delegation.  I can think of two: when someone is truly new to the ways of leadership and in times of crisis. When someone is cutting their teeth on leadership then you want to teach them how to handle responsibility.  It is the principle of seeing if they will be faithful in little so that they might grow in to being faithful with much.  In times of crisis there needs to be an authoritative decision maker and those who are willing to simply carry out those decisions to meet the critical need of the moment.  But these two scenarios leave a whole lot of opportunity for empowerment.

In my mind there are three critical aspects to empowerment.  To truly empower someone you must grant them authority, you must give them proper resources, and you must hold them accountable to organizational values and principles. They have to have enough authority to make some significant and important decisions-you have to give power away.  They have to have resources that are truly theirs to steward-people, money and tools.  Yet it is not a free for all-there should be an accountable aspect that helps them stay within the playing field of organizational boundaries.  You tell them the “what” but the “how” is left up to them.  They have to have enough of all three things to truly have the freedom to fail on their own efforts-and learn.

While there is a proper time for both things I am pushing the action point towards empowerment.  Here are some reasons why:

Delegation largely raises up followers-empowerment raises up leaders.

Delegation is less work for you in the short run-empowerment is more work for you in the short run.

Delegation is more work for you in the long run-empowerment is less work for you in the long run.

Delegation keeps you in the center of leadership activity-empowerment places someone else at the center of leadership activity.

Delegation ensures that you are your own leadership legacy-for good or for bad. Empowerment ensures that more leaders are your leadership legacy-which is almost always good.

Consider today some people around you that you can truly empower.

Harassment Post

:http://www.adams.edu/students/housing/residence-standards.pdf

Facilitation Observation Analysis (20 points)

You are to attend a meeting of your choice to assess the meeting in terms of effective meeting facilitation.  Please provide a thorough account describing and evaluating facilitation components such as meeting environment/space, facilitation preparation, organization, inclusivity and empowerment of members, ability to address arising conflict, engaging the disengaged, shared vision, community development, meeting closure, and other observations you may have had.  You will need to write a 3-4 page paper discussing the meeting experience and analyzing the meeting facilitation in regard                                                                                                          to the above concepts (described further in class).

Vision Statement (20 points)

Each student will create a vision statement based on the goals of either his/her position or his/her committee.  This vision should complement the overall Adams State College vision but be specific to what the short-term and long-term vision of the position or committee is.  You will need to incorporate effective visioning techniques and strategies as learned in class to your vision.

Event Critique (20 points)

You will attend an event that you did not help to plan or execute, either at Adams State, or in the community.   You are to analyze it and determine the factors that increased or limited the event’s success based on what we covered in class.  This analysis should be in the form of a 3-4-page paper discussing what the successful aspects of the program are, what the problem(s) are, what the potential solutions are, and how you would go about implementing a solution with a discussion on the risks or disadvantages involved with your solution.  Finally, discuss why you approached the situation as you did.

Strategic Plan (30 points)

Each student will create a strategic plan for AIDS Awareness Week, or his/her position or committee.  The strategic plan should be typed and presented in a professional format on the due date.  Each student will present his or her plan to the committee during midterms. The strategic plan needs to address the following areas.

• Brief overview of vision
• Purpose your position or committee serves
• 5 goals for your position/committee

◦       For each goal, list at least 3 action-oriented initiatives you or your committee will need to do to accomplish that goal

• Timeline for goal completion
• Strategies for effectively and efficiently completing your plan
• Outline of committee/position budget in accordance with goals, initiatives, and strategies

Fund Management (30 points)

Based on either the vision of AIDS Awareness Week or based on the vision of your position or committee, determine needs that could be fulfilled by a sponsorship initiative.  This could include any type of fundraising activity, soliciting donations of either money or goods, or other creative means of generating revenue.  For your project, you are to write a 3-5-page proposal that discusses the need you are trying to find sponsorship for as well as a thorough description of your idea.  You should research and find out what steps you would need to take to actually perform this initiative.  This includes any College policies specific to your proposal, understanding how your target organization allocates money and anything specific that is required of your plan.

In addition to writing the proposal, you are to create a 10-minute presentation to the class.  Each student is to receive a copy of your proposal for the presentations.  Sign-ups for presentation and project due date will be done in class prior to the due dates.