A manager who is a poor communicator is not going to get the message across to his employees, and hence, will doom his employees incapable of aiding the company to reach its goal when that goal was not clearly defined. This could have catastrophic results to a company, depending on the size or criticality of that manager's department to the overall success of the business. Nilson hits the nail on head in her article when she qoated James Baxter as saying, "Middle managers also need to do a lot more in the areas of staff training and development, relationship building, and change management.".
Without proper training in the use of organizational behavior, managers will be fumbling around trying to figure out the best way to develop their employees. While some managers may develop their own satisfactory technique, the overall organization will flounder because the group as a whole does not have the tools to help themselves, let alone their employees. These tools would improve the employee's ability to problem solve, communicate, plan, organize, the list goes on and on. The manager once did some of the tasks employees may be asked to do. These tasks would include monitor their own labor hours, or keeping track of manufacturing defects, like shorts, longs and incompletes. This is called empowering the employee. But, just giving the employee the power, without the knowledge on how to use this power is as useless as giving teeth to a cadaver. They may look nice, but what is he really going to accomplish by having them.
Employee empowerment can be one of the single most effective OB tools in the manager's toolbox. Giving employees the training they need to make these decisions, as well as other tools, can have a significant and almost synergistic effect on the company. Issues that may have been thought to be too difficult, ingrained or costly to overcome can be found to have nothing helping them stay, when empowerment is used properly.
