The 'pump'......

Winding down,

Thank you once again for joining me as we digress and my knowledge becomes your updates is coming to a close. This week we learned about empowerment and how it involves the leader in particular and how it affects a person or a group of people. This concept can clearly be defined as, “giving power to someone thus resulting in a greater sense of confidence/self esteem and ability to do a task”. If done with a ‘good heart’ and attitude this can go a long way resulting in nothing less than optimistic group contributions to better each one. However, there is one thing people need to know that will use this skill effectively and that is whoever is doing the ‘empowering’ of the other person they need to know what that certain person is good at. For example, this applies to my past life when I was on the wrestling and football team starting out as a freshman. There would be team leaders that encouraged others including myself on the team and in wrestling if he knew I had a clear shot at working a move which I was good at he would call it and I would follow up with it. This benefited the group in points, resulted in a wins for me, and boosted my self-confidence gearing up for the next match.

As well as knowing what empowerment is one needs to know what to believe in order to follow through and this includes:

• That others might be better at something
 That others should have the chance to thrive
 That the fact that others might do something different than you would does not make it bad
 That giving power to others creates an opportunity for you to learn something new

Realizing these factors one can assume it goes ‘hand-in-hand’ with motivation in part which is the next concept. Motivation can be defined as an incentive or move to action. There three different dimensions of motivation including intrinsic, relational, and extrinsic, but for now I will go into depth on the one that I live by and that is extrinsic motivation and the details by which this entails are as follows:

 Tangible rewards (scholarships, awards, prizes, gifts, money)
 Credit towards something (academic credit or completing requirements toward something larger)
 Experience to build your resume
 Opportunity for advancement (promotion, new opportunities)
 Avoiding penalties (fines, loss of privileges)
 Public recognition
 Knowing that someone may return the favor
 Competition with others/to win

The one in which I go by most is competition with others which I dislike losing. This ‘inner drive’ within me has pushed myself to the limit and given me success. I still believe I am humble, but there is nothing better than competing with each other to put your skills to the test. I also know when to motivate others giving them that extra ‘boost’ they need when down. There many ways to apply this to leadership if not stated in the obvious, but the question you can draw is when was the last time you motivated or was motivated by someone?