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Empower

Choosing to Act on What Matters
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Empowered at Work®

Ownership begins with choice.

Empowered at Work helps people move beyond blame, dependency, and overmanagement toward greater agency, trust, ownership, and positive accountability.

Public Workshop Experience Empowered at Work for yourself.

Join a public Empowered at Work® workshop and explore a different way of thinking about accountability, authority, trust, and the choices you make at work.

Join a Public Workshop → Open enrollment for individual participants.
The Empowered at Work Experience

Choice changes what happens next.

Empowered at Work® moves through three connected parts of working with greater ownership: the choices we make, the conversations we have, and the commitments we keep.

Empowered at Work model: Choices We Make, Conversations We Have, Commitments We Keep
01

Choices We Make

Recognize where you have freedom and agency—even within constraints—and examine the choices shaping your experience at work.

02

Conversations We Have

Change the conversations that reinforce dependency, low trust, and blame into conversations that create partnership and ownership.

03

Commitments We Keep

Translate choice into action through meaningful commitments to yourself, your colleagues, and the future you want to create.

The Shift

From powerless to purposeful.

Empowered at Work helps people notice where they are giving away authority—and practice taking greater responsibility for how they respond, contribute, and create change.

01 Dependency

Waiting for someone else.

Responsibility sits somewhere outside of us—with a manager, the system, another team, or circumstances we cannot control.

02 Choice

Seeing where you have agency.

Recognize the choices available to you, even when the situation itself is constrained.

03 Agency

Acting on what matters.

Move from waiting for permission toward taking meaningful action within your own sphere of influence.

04 Ownership

Becoming a co-creator.

Take responsibility for the future you want and the role you play in creating it with others.

Positive Accountability

Empowerment is not about having complete control. It is about recognizing where you have choice—and acting from that place with greater ownership and purpose.

The Workshop Experience

Practice empowerment, don’t just talk about it.

Empowered at Work is an experiential workshop. Participants examine the choices they make at work, explore how trust and accountability shape their relationships, and practice new ways of taking ownership in real situations.

Empowered at Work

Turn ideas about empowerment into everyday practice.

Participants work with their own experiences, relationships, and challenges—not hypothetical case studies—so the learning connects directly to the workplace they return to.

Rooted in the Work of Peter Block Including the ideas behind The Empowered Manager and decades of work on stewardship, accountability, and choice.
01

Define the future you want.

Get clear about the workplace, relationships, and conditions you want to help create.

02

Rethink accountability.

Explore accountability as freedom of choice rather than blame, compliance, or control.

03

Examine where you give away power.

Notice patterns of waiting, dependency, and blame that limit your ability to act.

04

Navigate low-trust relationships.

Practice taking constructive action even when trust is imperfect or the relationship is difficult.

05

Coach for ownership.

Learn ways of supporting others without taking responsibility away from them.

06

Make the learning actionable.

Leave with a personal Learning M.A.P. for putting greater agency and accountability into practice.

What Participants Leave With
A stronger sense of personal agency
A new relationship with accountability
Practical ways to navigate low trust
Greater clarity about values and purpose
Tools for coaching without rescuing
A plan for putting the learning into practice
Ready to explore Empowered at Work? Bring the experience to your team—or attend a public workshop first to see whether it’s right for your organization.
What Changes

What happens when people act with greater ownership?

Empowered at Work helps organizations shift the everyday patterns that keep people waiting, blaming, rescuing, or overmanaging—and create more room for initiative, trust, and shared responsibility.

01

Less waiting for permission.

People become more willing to act within their sphere of influence instead of assuming authority always sits somewhere else.

02

Healthier accountability.

Conversations move away from blame and toward responsibility, choice, and contribution.

03

More initiative.

People become more likely to name what matters, make a move, and contribute without waiting to be directed.

04

Stronger peer relationships.

Teams build trust by taking responsibility for how they work together rather than relying solely on leaders to intervene.

05

Less overmanagement.

Leaders no longer have to carry all the responsibility for motivation, problem-solving, and follow-through.

06

More shared ownership.

People begin to see themselves as co-creators of the workplace rather than consumers of decisions made elsewhere.

Want to build more ownership across your organization?

Tell us what you’re seeing now and what you’d like to be different. We’ll help you explore whether Empowered at Work is the right fit.

Start a Conversation →
What People Are Saying

A different way to think about accountability.

“I walked away thinking differently about the choices I make every day—and the responsibility I have for creating the workplace I want.”
Empowered at Work participant Workshop participant
“The idea of positive accountability completely changed the way I think about ownership at work.”
Empowered at Work participant Workshop participant
“It helped me see where I was waiting for someone else to change—and what I could choose to do differently.”
Empowered at Work participant Workshop participant
Ways to Learn

Build the capability—or experience it first.

For Your Organization

Create greater ownership across your team.

Bring Empowered at Work directly to your organization. Create a shared language for choice, accountability, trust, agency, and the responsibility people have for shaping the workplace together.

Bring Empowered at Work to Your Organization →
Pilot the Experience

Join a public workshop first.

Send one or two people to experience Empowered at Work, explore positive accountability firsthand, and consider whether a broader organizational experience makes sense.

View Public Workshops →
The Ideas Behind the Work

Decades of thinking about what it means to act with agency.

Empowered at Work brings Peter Block’s ideas about empowerment, stewardship, accountability, choice, and responsibility into an experience people can practice together.

The Empowered Manager by Peter Block
The Book Behind the Work

The Empowered Manager

What if authority didn’t have to come from above?

Peter Block’s landmark work challenged the idea that people need permission from hierarchy to act with purpose and responsibility.

Empowered at Work brings those ideas into today’s workplace—helping people recognize their own authority, take responsibility for their choices, and become active co-creators of the organizations they inhabit.

Explore Peter Block’s Work →