Empowerment Is a Leadership Skill

Empowerment is more than a trendy buzzword. Exemplary leaders already know how important it is to match their behavior with their words to Model the Way and creating a culture of empowerment that drives results is no different.

As the world and workplace continue to evolve at a rapid pace, what makes people feel empowered in their organizations, especially in the face of great uncertainty, has changed. It is no longer enough to simply delegate tasks to employees whose tenure have earned them incrementally increased responsibility. It is about creating quality relationships that recognize talent, effort, and engagement with increased autonomy and trust and not just with words alone but backed by meaningful action.

Wiley Workplace Intelligence sought to gain insight into what empowerment means to individuals in organizations today and what leaders can do to promote a culture of empowerment to improve performance, retention, and to build the leaders of tomorrow.

Manager Relationship Paradox

79% cite relationship with manager as most significant to foster empowerment

We found that the relationship between employees and their managers plays a pivotal role in fostering empowerment, with 79% of employees citing it as the most significant factor in how empowered they feel at work. However, there's a clear disconnect between our respondents’ dependence on the relationships with their managers and their managers’ empowerment behaviors. Empowerment behaviors include aligning actions with words, modeling desired behaviors, demonstrating trust, assigning meaningful authority, and recognition.

This gap reveals a critical paradox: employees rely heavily on their managers to feel empowered, yet many managers are not fully equipped or consistent in delivering that empowerment.

For leaders, this insight is a call to action. Empowerment is an essential element of healthy organizations and employee retention, even more so as traditional rewards and measures of success (such as financial incentives, promotions, etc.) are impacted by external instability.

Organizations have an opportunity to invest in developing managers' abilities to model empowerment consistently and authentically. This includes training on trust-building, decision delegation, and recognition practices, as well as holding managers accountable for empowerment outcomes.

By closing the gap between expectation and execution, leaders can unlock higher engagement, innovation, and performance across their teams.

The Recognition Crisis

Only 60% report receiving consistent recognition

As we know, recognition is one of the most powerful tools a leader has to reinforce empowered behavior, yet we found that it is also the most underutilized. With only 60% of employees reporting consistent recognition from their managers, this is the lowest-performing area of leadership behavior.

This shortfall helps explain why empowered actions often fail to take root or ripple across teams. When people don’t feel seen or valued for taking initiative, they’re less likely to repeat those behaviors and even less likely to inspire others to do the same. Meaningful recognition is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to Encourage the Heart and show your people they're truly valued.

For leaders striving to set an example, recognition must be more than an occasional gesture, it should be a deliberate and visible practice. Recognizing contributions, especially those that reflect shared values or bold thinking, sends a clear message about what matters. It also builds trust and psychological safety, encouraging others to step up. Leaders who consistently acknowledge empowered behaviors not only reinforce them but also create a culture where initiative and ownership thrive.

Do What You Say You’ll Do

Many managers are saying the right things about empowerment, in fact our research showed that 72% of managers talk about empowering their people, but far fewer are following through with consistent action.

This gap between words and deeds sends mixed signals to employees, undermining trust, and stalling momentum. When leaders talk about empowerment but fail to delegate meaningful authority (meaning allowing people to have decision-making power without micromanagement), involve others in decision-making, or recognize initiative, it creates a culture of hesitation rather than ownership which can hinder growth, engagement, and even ultimately impact the bottom line.

To truly empower their people, leaders must shift from messaging to modeling. To Model the Way, leaders should embed empowerment into everyday practices: inviting input on key decisions, trusting team members with stretch assignments, and visibly celebrating initiative to positively reinforce leadership behaviors. Organizations can support this shift by equipping managers with tools and training to act with intention, and by measuring empowerment not just by sentiment, but by observable behaviors. When empowerment becomes a lived experience rather than a leadership slogan, it unlocks full potential.

Empowerment Starts with Action

We found that empowerment is alive in today’s workplaces with 77% of employees saying they feel empowered in their current roles. But that sense of empowerment is fragile and heavily dependent on the actions of managers who often don’t have the training or skills to foster meaningful empowerment.

While many managers talk about empowerment, far fewer consistently model it through trust, delegation, recognition, and access to information. This gap between intention and execution creates confusion, erodes trust, and limits the spread of empowered behaviors.

To close this gap, organizations must move beyond messaging and invest in meaningful change. That means equipping managers with training and tools to practice empowerment daily, making recognition a consistent habit, and ensuring employees have the information they need to act with confidence. Empowerment isn’t a one-time initiative; it’s a powerful tool built through everyday exemplary leadership. When managers lead by example, empowerment becomes contagious, and the entire organization thrives.

Wiley’s suite of professional solutions provides a structure and common language to help empower entire organizations with the skills needed to get to the next level. From unlocking the power of leadership at every level with The Leadership Challenge^®, building better teams with The Five Behaviors^®, improving understanding to create engaged, collaborative, and adaptive cultures with Everything DiSC^® on Catalyst™, or helping you make confident hiring decisions with PXT Select^®, Wiley has innovative solutions that help make the workplace a better place.

Wiley Workplace Intelligence conducts in-depth research on key workplace issues by gathering insights from individual contributors, managers, and leaders. Wiley Workplace Intelligence then analyzes these findings to provide actionable solutions that are shared in our blog.