Empowerment entails sharing administrative authority with individuals and teams. Empowerment is a vehicle to tap employee creativity for solving problems and making decisions that directly influence their professional lives and work space. When authority is shared, the leader's influence increases and greater loyalty results. As team members receive more authority, they can accomplish more and provide leaders with more time to coordinate and support employees.

Sharing authority also means sharing the credit for success, and team achievements become administrator achievements. Empowering employees is not difficult or costly. The following are essentials to maximize effectiveness in empowered teams: Provide training in team building and team work skills and create a positive emotional environment that supports team work, team decisions, and radiates with leader dedication to team efforts.

Provide teams with the necessary time, moral support, and resources to accomplish their tasks. Reward and recognize the merits of teamwork and constantly encourage teams to be creative in solving problems and to be innovative in designing new programs. Increase team responsibility and authority as successes occur and initiatives are taken. Encourage team members to practice self-leadership by allowing teams to set their own goals and objectives, evaluate their own performance, and recommend their own rewards.