High involvement leadership: moving from talk to action

Finds in a study across 25 organizations more talk about high‐involvement leadership than effective implementation. Part of the problem was that senior managers wore rose‐coloured glasses when viewing high involvement in their organizations, which obscured the need for more action. There were many other barriers to empowerment, including a lack of appropriate rewards, mistrust and lack of self‐motivation on the part of front‐line employees, and leaders’ skills. Identifies various factors that hurt and helped high‐involvement leadership. But if used well, empowering leadership practices had handsome payoffs for leaders, their direct reports, and organizational effectiveness. Makes five recommendations to help managers implement high‐involvement leadership better.