One of the key topics we learnt about during my Leadership training was the Difference between these two approaches.
In general delegation and empowerment are two ways to getting things which are under your responsibility done by utilising your Team. They key Difference here is how we cascade the actions or responsibilities to our Team members.
In Delegation the task is explained to the Team and the Team works on the said task but the key here is that the decision making part or the way the outcomes are derived are fully defined by the Leader. The Leader needs to trust in this case mostly on the skills of the Team.
In Empowerment the Team is enabled with all the power (in terms of decision making, outcomes, method of working) inorder to work on the Task of the Leader. Here the Leader has a high trust level on the Team's skill and capability. And most part of the accountability falls on the Team rather than the former.
Also though Empowerment takes more time to apply the approach to the Team, the Leader can effectively utilise his Team in the future, should a similar task arise. The benefit here is that the Leader gets more time and energy (due to less efforts) on his hands.
The benefit of delegation I would say is when a Leader has less time on his hands and needs to get things done quickly. And he somewhat has a bit more control over the output.
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