When Compliance Won't Do

Two buzz phrases (management techniques) that drive me crazy - "Empowerment" and "Buy-in".
I suspect they had their roots in the best of intentions, and I do not profess to know anything about how they came to be household phrases.
What makes me crazy about empowerment is the illusion that somehow, I (the person with the power) am going to bestow upon you a new sense of power over your circumstances. I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to allow people to have as much input as they can handle, I actually think that's a great thing. But let's be real here, at the end of the day, if I've empowered you, I still have the ultimate power to say whether or not your decision is going to fly. My point is it's misleading. What I'm actually doing is parceling off a piece of my perceived control over you, probably one that I believe is not that important to my circumstances.
What makes me crazy about buy-in is that it implies that I have to present things in such a way that you see them as worthy of your purchase. To me, both of these strategies smack of manipulation, or getting what I want indirectly.
In both of these management techniques, I am really either just widening your field of compliance, or giving you an opportunity to see that my way is a good one for you. If I am your boss, that means I carry the real power of whether you are going to continue to get a paycheck, promotion, feed your family, make the house payment...

Another way is to be as vulnerable as you really are - openly. A look at the power spectrum (I wish I could remember and give credit to the source here) shows the most primitive power you can have over anyone is that of physical strength which includes financial strength. The highest order of power you can have over someone is unconditional love. When viewed this way, leaders and managers are really vulnerable, especially when they favor the primitive side of the power spectrum.
When the leader shows up with a stake in the ground and sincerely invites everyone who might be affected to declare their real thoughts and feelings and to contribute - is when great things happen, and when such courageous leaders see the shared stake in the ground, they see that it is actually stronger than anything they could have originally envisioned themselves alone in their own vacuum. The reason… self actualization.
What a great gift leaders can give to their teams - an opportunity to become the person I want to become through this thing that we are going to accomplish together.