Find (and Keep) Top Talent for Your Business (Collection), 2/e

5The Deadly Lack of Empowerment Trap

The Self-Empowered Manager

Jeanne Bogre is marketing manager for Danly IEM, a Cleveland-based company that is the leading manufacturer of die sets, die-making supplies, and machine components for industries in North America. (Think about the people who make machines for factories. Danly IEM sells products to them.) Jeanne is in a challenging place. Not only is it a male-dominated industry (and, yes, Jeanne has had to deal with her share of sexist attitudes, usually veiled but no less powerful for that), but it’s also an industry in which quite a bit of outsourcing is going on, generating a lot of fear among rank-and-file employees about their jobs moving to Asia or Latin America.

Under the circumstances, many ...