Every boss, every manager and every company pays lip service to leading their people by empowerment and positive reinforcement. It's much like the weather. Everyone talks about it but few really do anything about it.

"They swear they believe in the carrot not the stick," one ex-manager told me of his former employer. "But a lot of people seem to be getting brutalized by that carrot." "Brutalized" is actually my word. The phrase he used was considerably more graphic - and painful to imagine.

He showed me several post cards from his former co-workers. One read, "The flogging will continue until morale improves." Another quoted Steven Wright, "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism."

I was reminded of a construction company vice president who, a few years back, hired me to deliver a presentation on the benefits of empowerment at a management meeting. The session was very well received; the vice president himself was so inspired that he immediately leaped up and told all his managers that they'd better be empowered from that moment on, "Or believe me heads are going to roll." He added, in all seriousness, "Just make sure you clear everything with me first."

"He just empowered them to do nothing but claim to be empowered," one of the other speakers whispered to me.