You can encourage someone directly, for example, “John encouraged Susan to take the realtor’s exam”, but usually only an EVENT can embolden someone, e.g: “Winning the championship emboldened the team”.

Embolden is a synonym for encourage in help topic. In some cases you can use "Embolden" instead a verb "Encourage", when it comes to topics like inspire, hearten, cheer up, give courage. But Encourage is commonly used while emboldened is never really used.