This chapter examines how consultancy can empower people. We begin by discussing how people may be empowered. Following this, we examine how the consultants gather and use information pertaining to the consultancy. Lastly, we dip into a consultant's notebook to explore how consultants work in different domains of public services organisations.

What empowerment entails

We saw in the definition of empowerment in Chapter Four that it refers both to the capacity of people to take control of their lives and to the process by which they do this and, potentially, empower others to do the same. When we consider as consultants the notion of empowerment in action, the image that comes to mind is of waves or rays that are capable of permeating throughout the entire arena of public services, that is, it affects different domains of people's work and lives, in that they may be involved in self-empowerment, empowering other individuals, groups, organisations, communities and political systems. These different domains of empowerment exemplify five aspects of the concept (Adams, 2008a, p 75), its:

• • connectedness, in that they all interact with each other;

• • holism, in that they engage the whole person between them;

• • equality, in that they are not in a hierarchy;

• • authenticity, in that they are not merely technical, but, for the people involved, embodied states of being and doing;

• • dynamism. Empowerment in practice (Adams, 2008a, p 74) is the term used to refer to ‘the continuous interaction between critical reflection and empowering practice, that is, the continuous in and out cycle of reflecting–acting–evaluation and the interplay between thinking and doing’ – a critical and self-critical process.

Staff and citizens are both groups targeted by the empowering approach adopted in this book. The purpose of empowering consultancy is to empower all staff and other people involved in providing and receiving services, rather than to reinforce the power of managers and other senior staff, while junior staff and members of the public remain relatively disempowered. In order to empower other people, however, staff need to feel empowered themselves. In organisations delivering public services, information is power. People wield power by holding information and sometimes by withholding it from other people.