Boosting Empowerment by Developing Self-efficacy

Countless articles have urged managers to empower their staff, yet, few provide concrete suggestions about how to prepare staff for a more challenging role. Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1997) has identified the three main sources of self-efficacy, which is a person's belief that they can proficiently achieve their objectives. Based upon recent research, this paper proposes a model of practical actions that managers can undertake in order to boost the performance of their staff by raising their self-efficacy. These actions are coaching, participation, demonstration, mentoring, stimulation and provid ing rewards. In order to assist managers to develop their skill at applying these initiatives in a manner that will boost staff self-efficacy, a corresponding behavioural self-assessment is provided.