Diabetes self-management is a challenge for both clients and health-care professionals. Empowerment plays a vital role in helping clients to achieve successful self-management. This study adopted a meta-ethnographic approach. Nine qualitative studies were synthesized in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of what clients perceive as being important in an effective empowerment strategy for diabetes self-management. Four central metaphors that influenced empowerment were identified: trust in nurses' competence and awareness, striving for control, a desire to share experiences, and nurses' attitudes and ability to personalize. The lines-of-argument synthesis suggested the need for an evaluation system to appraise clients' diabetes knowledge, health beliefs, and negative emotions, as well as the outcome of interventions. Based on Pender's Health Promotion Model, this study emphasizes the fact that health-care professionals need to understand and address modifiable behavior-specific variables. The study suggests that an effective empowerment strategy would be to use activity-related affect, as well as interpersonal and situational influences, as a means of facilitating and enhancing clients' health-promoting behaviors.