Why empowerment does not empower: the bankruptcy of current paradigms

As a result of the rapid changes taking place in health care, nurse leaders are more challenged than ever to assume a new and different kind of leadership. Under the current paradigm, leaders are responsible for the performance of their people. Leaders do things TO the organization and the people in it. That paradigm of leader responsibility for other people's performance, given today's circumstances, guarantees organizational failure. A radical transformation in leadership thinking must take place. The leader's job is to get the people to be responsible for their own performance.