Great Power Comes Great Responsibilty

Empowerment is the word that I usually hear on beauty pageants because this is how women separate their ability against men, Women Empowerment and World Peace! Funny though but could it tickles my mind to search more about this. We can define empowerment as an act of transferring power, to delegate or authorize. Okay! Now we are talking something here. The term can be visualize through fantasy movies wherein a warlock transfers his powers to his successor which he trained for a long time and deserves the gift.

In the real world, this has nothing to do with magic or sorcery because none of those exist. The real power is the information that we hold within ourselves. I do conduct a class about Knowledge Management wherein we tackle about how do we organize and share our knowledge. Knowledge is acquired through experience and skills so it can’t be taken away from you. There are times that someone copies our work or plans but they are just getting our ideas. In my own point of view, ideas are merely the crumbs of bread because they nourish us when it comes to building our output. The knowledge that we have is the one that takes us to a journey that evolve through time but it needs to be organized.

How do we get power in the organization? The authority in the organization can be acquired or through our exemplary execution of our potentials. Aside from that we can also get the power through greed and total manipulation of the scenario. For some people, they do not need to work hard to be at the top management because the position is served on them in silver platter. These are the people are family members that takes over the management. This situation can be good or bad. If the heir or heiress is good enough with the position, well there is no doubt that the subordinates can easily adapt to the new management. The people in the organization are usually having a very short time span in relating and adjusting to any changes because of their work load. That is why the few months of the new manager is crucial because it is the moment of judgement. The dark side of it is that when the manager acts against the norms. If we are going to think about it the top management possesses great power over their subordinates but if we are going to see the other possibility, once the majority of the employees gather their thoughts and skills in creating one great plan surpasses the manipulation of the top management. http://www.empowermentillustrated.com/ was able to come up with two flavors of empowerment:

1. One with benefits to both an empowerer and those empowered.

This is what we call “empowerment” wherein we get a certain authorization from a powerful person. Personally, I never experienced this because I am a type of person that always sees success with my own effort. But on the lighter note if ever someone will give me power to govern the organization, I will think a million times before accepting it. Just like the quotation from one of my favorite movie which is the Spiderman, “great power comes great responsibility”. That person that delegates that power to me saw a potential that somehow contributes to the improvement of the organization. But as the receiver, I also need to level up my sense of consciousness to be able to assess myself if I really handle it. Most people would easily grab the once in a lifetime opportunity because of what is at stake in it. But always keep in mind that not all opportunities are destined for us, rush judgements can lead to a total shock that sadly bring down the expectations.

2. Another where power is created out of nothing by somebody who previously perceived themselves to be powerless and then woke up to their own power.

This is what we call self empowerment and this is my cup of tea. I may look loud but I am nobody at all. I may have the wildest ideas and out of this world thoughts that I usually share it with my close friends and colleagues. I gain the power when they reacted on it whether they agree or not. In that case can say to myself that I was able to transfer good vibes or empower positivity to my peers. Inside the classroom, I don’t consider myself as the boss but instead a source of positivity to help my students see the greater venue for learning. They need to seek alternative ways to identify their comfort zone and how to get out with it. My own experiences can be a learning tool for them.

It is also essential to discuss about the 5 bases of which acted as a source for Organizational power for an individual according to French and Raven. http://www.wciltd.com/pdfquark/powerorgv2.pdf

1. Position in the hierarchy – that is one’s place in the formal rank structure of the organization, indicated by one’s title.
In my current organization I belong to the academic department that is responsible in creating techniques in teaching new approaches for learning. The profit of the school is no longer my great concern because that is the job of the administrative department. As an instructor, my power is the ability to possess more experiences compared to my students. I don’t believe that teachers are always knowledgeable because most of the time our students possesses brilliant ideas. My way to empower the students is to let them bring out their potentials by giving them the authority to create an output base on my inputs in class.

2. Reference relationships – that is, the personal connection that an individual is perceived to have to others in the organization who are high in the formal hierarchy. Notice something very important that is at play here. It is the perception of relationship that generates power. That is, an individual who has personal relationships with others high in the hierarchy, but whose relationships are not obvious to others does not have access to this source of power. It is only when the individual can credibly reference the existence of these relationships that they act as a source of personal power.

The organization that I’m in right now is not our family business. With this bases I can relate this to our Student Supreme Council (SSC) wherein I play as there adviser. The SSC conducts an election annually but I remain as the adviser so I may handle different set of student officers. My power is to keep the balance within the organization because I have the knowledge of what happen in the previous administration. The past will lead the present to a better future because we learn from our mistakes and make some changes to improve ourselves.

3. Resource control acts in interesting kinds of ways. Because of the bureaucratic nature of many organizations, individuals relatively low in the formal hierarchy can often have a great deal of resource control. The classic example is the facilities manager who can override the requirements of a VP for the design of a personal office, because that facilities manager has been empowered by the organization to enforce a facilities policy. Another example is the IT service analyst who can override the decision of a manager to have a particular kind or configuration of a personal computer, because of standards created as part of an overall technology policy. Literally then, resource control means the ability to mobilize or deny the mobilization of organizational resources: dollars, people, assets, and external relationships.

So far, I haven’t encountered this overriding of tasks in the organization because I always give chances to everyone who wants perform whether within the faculty members or the class. For instances that my program head will suddenly give one of my assigned duty to another person, I will activate my power of understanding because it might be that he saw how fully loaded I am with prior tasks. With that attitude I can also empower my students with the ability of dividing the tasks to the members of the group to create faster and greater outputs.

4. Demonstrated expertise – An individual who is recognized as having the capability, and special knowledge, in an area of importance to others in the organization has expert power. Once again, passively having the expertise is not enough. The individual must behave in a way which leads others in the organization that has personal power to recognize and value the expertise.

As an instructor, this is our main tasks that we must excel with because we have to convey messages or information o our students for them to create their own ideas. Although we are the 21st century education that the teacher is just to facilitate the class and the students is the one who come up an output. During class discussions I need to make sure that I came to the class prepared so that at the end of the session at least all of them can absorb the topics. There are also times when an instructor is bounded with his emotions and resulted to a not so excellent data transmission in the class. Oh well it’s jut ok because it will show the vulnerable of me that will the student realize that they need to step up and be confident in checking my mishaps. The power of acceptance as a teacher must come out from me so that I will be challenged to give extra effort next time. Old school teachers consider committing mistake in front of the class is a mortal sin because it may degrade their credibility. But the new generate teachers must appreciate committing acceptable to ignite our level of consciousness to keep us grounded.

5. Personality power – the way a person expresses personality (how I behave, dress, and communicate) in an organization can grant them power. It’s been long recognized that senior executives who use their emotions in explicit ways to create drama, define stands on issues, communicate to large groups, provide leadership to task and problem solving teams, engage in and win battles around issues with organizational peers, and represent the organization visibly in the exterior world, all have personal power. These are all forms of expression of one’s personality. They represent who one is, and how one wants to be in the world.

As what I have mentioned regarding my level of existence in the academe, I’m just a nobody. I don’t have any intention o putting myself down because I am confident enough that with a right goal and mind setting i can at least touch one life that will later on build something new in the society. I am a type of a teacher that doesn’t allow monotony in the class that ends up to boredom. I always inject my bubbly and animated personally to kill this moment. My personality always creates free flowing relationship among peers and colleagues. They usually see me as a person with a lot comical skills with great sense on the side. The advantage of having this character is that I can easily think of ideas that could resolve a certain mishaps. They can hardly notice that I am deeply struggling within the situation. The disadvantage is that I am prone to people who might abuse my ability to make things lighter and never take me seriously.

Zir Zirdge’s Point of View
Organizing is a way of arranging data and putting them in correct perspective. The application is the same in all things maybe they come in different approach but the logic is the same which is to keep it proper. Empowerment is a very good thing for a long as it is done correctly. That is why organizing the empowerment values are needed for us to transfer the power to those people who deserves it. As the receiver of the power, we must also put into consideration on how valuable this opportunity and to assess whether we can stand with it or walk away.