Empowering Teams in Organizations: Concepts, Theories, and Issues

This essay delves into the critical concept of empowering teams within organizational structures, emphasizing its impact on performance and productivity. It explores the core principles of empowerment, which involve granting teams the autonomy to make decisions, fostering their creativity, and shari...Read More

Running Head: PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS
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Managing teams of people in Organizations
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PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS 1
“To Get the Most Out of Teams, Empower Them”
Empowerment is the power and approval to act and to empower the team which means to free
them to do their job creatively. Every power has some limitations but it is up to an individual
to apply it rationally and keep on increasing productivity (Hanaysha 2016, pp. 298-306). The
team can be empowered by sharing responsibilities to work on achieving a common goal
through inspiring ideas and solutions. The managers are the one who empowers the team by
providing trust and training to them for development of their self-direction and potential.
Managers need input, ideas, feedback by empowering the team to share responsibilities and
act as a mentor. However, the counter argument is that managers face various challenges
while empowering employees which make it difficult for them to achieve their desired goals.
Empowering employees is not the only factor of effective performance but it is essential to
enhance the productivity as well. The empowering team also includes relations and giving
them the power to make decisions (Park & Hassan 2018, pp. 212-225). In this essay, the topic
aims at empowering teams by motivating and developing energy in teams discussing
concepts and theory for the effective performance of the company relating to the issues faced
by the managers with solutions.
It is important for teams to set them free for making decisions and developing their own
strategies. It can be done with the help of building trust by giving them valid right by the
managers of leaders of the company. It takes motivation and commitment to the team by the
management for making them perform effectively. And when a team has the freedom to
make their own choices, they start taking more responsibilities and work for good. The teams
can be nurtured with their learning and development where they are allowed to make
decisions that harm no one (Burke 2016, pp. 795-800). The making of effective teams can be
good but not every time gives a positive impact on the consequences. Empowering teams is
nothing but a reason for taking more responsibilities without associating an increase in real
profits like salary and needs direction to achieve the common goals to succeed (Ashkenas
2013). It becomes a stress for each individual employee due to lack of leader for advice
suggestion, and when the team is self-directed, they start disconnecting from the company
and its mission. Therefore, there is no guarantee of using power effectively for handling
people and due to this, the only power they use is to make decisions and only to leaders who
know the working and achieve a common goal of the company.

PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS 2
Team dynamics are the forces that have an impact on team’s behaviour and performance
including profitability of the company, employees satisfied with their work, workforce
holding rates, individual and team performance, image of the company and more. In the
company, team dynamics are avoided which can have impact on the working of individual
employees. The performance can be influenced by unproductive conflicts, demotivation,
mistrust, and loss of revenue and skilled workforce (Myers 2013). It can be improved by
diagnosing through conduct and trying to know the team, quickly addressing the problem,
making a team agreement for defining roles, culture enhancement of team, building
communication, and paying attention to the team. The team with good dynamics is supposed
to work well together for producing a positive outcome. It requires strong leadership support
and abilities for functioning and brings people together. The improvement by the
involvement of team efforts consists of forming, storming, norming, and performing
depending on the understanding of managers and employees for better performance with
changing perspectives, facing challenges and being attentive (Tannenbaum et al. 2012, pp. 2-
24). As per the context, productivity is measured on the basis of efficiency in production
which can be expressed as outputs to the inputs ratio used in the production process. To
create the greatest amount of outputs the description of process is used for the lowest amount
of inputs with signifying efficiency (Kashyap 2017). The managers empower individual
employees for productivity and effective performance.
It is essential to give power to employees for making their own decisions to show the
capability and trust of doing that work, and taking responsibility to work as the decisions
made by them can affect the performance of the company and their self-esteem as well. It is
important to keep on communicating which leads to effective productivity not to reach on
business failure. It is the duty of manager to make sure for team to know their strengths and
weaknesses so that they can use their skills and talents for good, and achieve their tasks
(Lyons 2016, pp. 1-3). The productivity and performance effectiveness depends on the
companionships between the individual employees for providing satisfaction at the workplace
by building them with performing exercises. The managers ensure to make good working
environment for improvement in the employees to perform effectively and pay attention to
achieve the target. The reasons for falling in effective productivity can be controlling boss,
politics at the workplace and arrogant employees (Arogundade & Arogundade 2015, pp. 39-
44). The employees working hard in the company to achieve the common goal need to be
appreciated which motivates them to do well and give their best, promoting a healthy

PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS 3
environment and productivity effectively. It is necessary to ask for feedback to build team
efficiency and to know where they lack and need to change for improvement by guidance
knowing the opportunities to boost performance in the company (Ray 2018).
The issues faced while empowering employees can be a lack of experience where the
individual employees are not able to handle the responsibilities given to them at the time of
making decisions that can risk the image of the company. There can be a degradation of
efficiency where they can misuse the power and make biased decisions with the occurrence
of problems (Williams 2015). The management can be a fuss with relationships due to
ignoring the boundaries which will lead to the controlling power over the employees. The
empowering team can be directed through positive measures in management that can be
positive leadership encouragement; providing proper training and incentives to the members;
transparency in the environment and avoiding miscommunication; manage individuals with
correct strategy to empower them for effective performance and success of the company
(Ayres 2016).
The concepts used to motivate and development of energy in employees are done by
managers who handle the processes, information, people and other duties for estimating the
improvement needed at the time of operations (Aithal & Kumar 2016, pp. 803-812). The
theories help in structuring the handling of responsibilities successfully for which managers
are responsible for the effective performance of the team with achieving the common goal in
the company. It provides the clarification in goals realization managers need to know. To
motivate employees to work with satisfaction applies Theory X and Theory Y which is a two-
factor theory by Douglas McGregor where Theory X is authoritarian and Theory Y is
participative (Beynon 2017). In Theory X, managers think of their team to be unmotivated
and disliking the work as a negative point of view where they need to be rewarded or
punished to make them complete their tasks and also includes the need for direction and
avoiding responsibilities, need to be forced, controlled and threatened for delivering the
work; need to work under supervision and make them to do work by giving attractive
rewards.
The theory applied in empowering employees is Theory Y where managers have a positive
point-of-view for the team and use participative and devolved management style. The
relationship between managers and the team is encouraged by trust and teamwork for
fulfilling the responsibilities and improve their skills. This theory gives opportunities to

PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS 4
employees frequently where they are happy to work initiative, need to be free for making
decisions, self-directed towards task completion, want to hold ownership without any control
of doing work, ready for accepting responsibility, always up for challenges and creatively
handles problem-solving (Lawter, Kopelman & Prottas 2015, pp. 84-101). The drawbacks of
this theory consider too much freedom where the team can lose their focus and misuse a
healthy working environment by not achieving the targets (Hattangadi 2015, pp. 20-21).
According to the perspective, the managers think of using both Theory X and Theory Y for
controlling the productivity in the company and employees with effective performance.
Hence, no matter what management style manager applies, both the theories will motivate the
team and have equal drawbacks.
To conclude, to make employees work by giving their best, it is important to empower them
for performing effectively. It is the duty of the management to motivate employees and look
after the team dynamics by choosing a positive management style. The handling of the team
is based on the responsibilities given to them and by what time they are achieving the direct.
The impact of a decision made by the team is considered to be on working in the
environment. The management of the team can be done by maintaining relationships with
effective communication and motivating individual employees to do things in a better way
for productivity and performance of the company effectively.

PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS 5
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PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS 6
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