Power – an exploration into the invisible
Many years ago I was working inside a large organization, and I had an experience that really helped me understand the mutable nature of power. I was down at the food court waiting in the Starbucks lineup, and glancing up from my phone, I noticed the CEO of the organization I worked for in the lineup a few people ahead of me. Now I didn’t know him personally and I don’t think I’d ever seen him outside of the usual corporate setting except when he was standing in front of the media and camera crews in the large atrium at the base of the office tower. So seeing him at Starbucks, was like seeing a cat at the beach. Not unheard of, but you can’t help doing a few double-takes.
While I was standing there, I found myself reflecting on his role and how much responsibility he had as the head of a 26,000 person organization. A big cheese, no question, and as such, he garnered a lot of respect and dare I say, deference. You know what I mean. That kind of bowing and scraping that we do around people in positions of power or celebrity. I’d seen how people would change when they spoke to him, becoming a little more focused, animated, interested. I’d seen senior leaders jockeying for his attention around the podium during a conference. And on more than one occasion, I’d seen people take his casual remarks quite seriously, going so far as to start plotting a new organizational initiative from them. I found this behaviour perplexing and frustrating and silly. I hadn’t been working for the organization very long at this point and didn’t have felt much skin in game, which made it easy to hold it all a little more objectively. Which was, I suppose, why the whole thing was so easily illuminated there in the Starbucks lineup. In spite of all his clout upstairs, here he was … well, just an ordinary guy in a brown suit. Forgettable even. On the outside of his usual domain of power, he had to wait in line just like the rest of us. He had to interact with a rather bored looking barista just the rest of us. Did he feel the difference? Did he notice that his power hadn’t come downstairs with him?
A few months later, I had an opportunity to better understand and codify what I’d seen in the Starbucks lineup that day. I was in Portland, training to certify in the use of a new leadership assessment tool called the Diamond Power Index, something specifically designed to examine the effective use of power in organizations. Almost right out of the gate, I found the term I was looking for. ‘Positional power.’ Because the CEO derived power from his position, his power only worked in the territory of his position. When he went down to Starbucks in the food court beyond the reach of his office, his power dipped and disappeared accordingly. Like moving beyond the wifi signal. Positional power was clearly contextual and I couldn’t resist imagining the CEO at home confronted by a rebellious teenager! CEO, schme e oh.
From what I’ve just described, I’m certain you know what I’m talking about and probably have examples you can draw from. Whether you understand power dynamics or not, most people “sense” what I’m talking about. We know there are times and places when we feel more powerful or less powerful, but we might not have a clear understanding of why it is that way or what to do about it. In my travels, I have on occasion crossed paths with celebrities of varying note. Once when I was working as a flight attendant, I told a high-profile Canadian sprinter to take his seat. Another time at an outdoor music concert, I invited Jim Cuddy, lead singer for Blue Rodeo, to cut the line and use the porta-potty ahead of me. In both instances, I felt a strange kind of giddiness as though I had stumbled onto some method for neutralizing their power because in both instances, they capitulated and I felt, well, powerful. I suppose I chalked it up to a basic psychological observation on my part of how these things normally work (bow scrape bow scrape) and I just did something different. Likely I was just as gob smacked on the inside as anyone else was, but I didn’t show it. I was excited to be able to bend power – or whatever the heck I thought I was doing.
I’ve also experienced interesting power dynamics with people who have a lot of money. My previous career in corporate aviation – yes, I’ve had a lot of previous careers, afforded me interactions with extremely affluent people, because of course private jets are a luxury item for a very small segment of the population. On one occasion, I was invited to an event at the home of a very successful aeronautical engineer in the vicinity of Boeing Field south of Seattle. The driveway up to the house was so long that the driver had to stop and ask a gardener for directions. One whole wall of the living room retracted to reveal a gigantic outdoor ballroom. This was serious wealth. As we pulled up, our host stood at the top of a grand entranceway, waving to us as one might wave to an approaching ship arriving in port. He was wearing a lime green ascot (google it). And perhaps because I had grown up around a lot of nouveau riche types who got a kick out of flaunting their money, the whole scene just seemed so over-the-top and calculated to impress. And so when the opportunity arose and I found myself chatting to the host, I attempted to change the game. Instead of bow, scrape, bow, scrape, I straight up asked him if all his money and success had brought him happiness – or something along those lines. It was awhile ago and I can’t remember exactly what I said. The point is, I broke some invisible norm by asking something direct and personal. I can’t remember what he said, but I do remember a little energetic wobble on his part for a moment before he quickly regrouped and said something witty and pat before moving on to speak to someone else. I hadn’t gotten an answer to my question, but I hadn’t really expected to. I just wanted to push a button and see what might happen. He seemed a bit wary of me after that.
All these years later, I have a framework for revealing what had previously been invisible. I had been busy fussing around in intersections of overlapping power. The CEO had positional or legitimate power, but within the context of her job, the barista at Starbucks had the personal power to shape the customer experience and influence the attitudes and behaviours of whoever they were serving. The athlete had referent or charismatic power (and possibly financial power) but as a flight attendant, I trumped that with formalized power to enforce the rules designed to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers. I was well within my rights to tell the sprinter to take his seat even though he was more interested in hanging around the galley signing autographs. The musician also had referent, charismatic, and probably financial power, but in a porta-potty lineup, I had the personal power to consciously decide to let the musician cut the line out of a sign of respect or admiration for his work. It was Jim Cuddy after all and I now had a great story to share with my friends when I got back. And finally, the aeronautical engineer at the fancy party had financial power but by applying a combination of my own personal power and probably a bit of referent and maybe even expert power, I was able to unseat him a little with my direct line of questioning. The intersections of power I’d been navigating were complex, but they were beginning to make a lot more sense. I wasn’t, in fact, bending power to my will darn it. I was just intuitively nudging situations with my own personal power.
And that’s what this blog is about – power. Over-use, under-use and just plain ignorance. Power is always at play in all situations whether we can see it or not. And while it’s as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, have you noticed how rarely we talk about it? And when we do, it’s usually with a wrinkled nose and a negative association. When I teach my business students politics, power and influence tactics, there are usually one or two students who object or take offence to the idea that someone would intentionally use their power (positional, personal or otherwise) to influence an agenda. It sounded nefarious to their ears. But simply being political or leveraging power or both doesn’t automatically mean people around need to hunker into defensive positions. If anything, we need to get better at normalizing the use of power. One of the biggest impediments to organizational success, after all, is poor use of power.
It's easy to think of a plethora of examples of somebody over-using their power. I once worked with a consulting partner who raised his voice and paced around the room during our contracting negotiations. I’ve been held by US border guards for hours and then released with no explanation. I’ve had bosses who’ve mocked me in front of my team. We’re all pretty familiar with examples like this because they take such a toll on us. But by the same token, I’ve pulled out my hair waiting for my boss to just tell me exactly what she wanted me to do. I’ve watched as a colleague let one of her employees come in late every day without saying anything even though all her other direct reports were seething. I’ve even failed to provide critical feedback to an employee who had screwed up because I didn’t want to stomp on their engagement. What you may not realize is that an underuse of power is every bit as destructive as overuse, if not more so. In fact, in the organizations I work in, underuse might even be more common.
But before we go too much further, I’d like to reinforce something really important.
Power rule #1) That is, that power is morally neutral.
It is not, in and of itself, inherently good or bad. It is a tool or resource like any other tool or resource. It is the actions of the person wielding the power who determines its morality. It’s the way we use it that matters.
On that note, I’m going to invite you to pause for a moment and focus on the word itself.
Power.
What does it make you think of?
What kind of reaction do you have to it?
How does it make you feel?
In which situations do you notice it most?
How do we define power?
From her book, Power, A User’s Guide, Julie Diamond – who also developed and delivered the training I’d taken part in in Portland - defines it this way, “power is our capacity to impact and influence our environment.” Her definition rests on the work of many previous scholars including German sociologist, Max Webber, and is intended to frame both formal and informal types of power. Historically, of course, power is often defined in terms of battle and military force.
Clearly there are different types of power, and I’ve mentioned some in this episode already. Remember the CEO? He had positional power. The aeronautical engineer had financial power, the athlete and artist had referent, charismatic and probably financial power and I had personal and expert power. Understanding the topic of power more deeply allows for a more nuanced exploration that might turn up types of power we didn’t even know we had. We also start noticing the limits of other people’s power and the whole thing becomes a bit more grey. And this is good news because then perhaps we begin to realize that navigating power requires greater sensitivity and compassion in our interactions with others. We are more successful when we limit those knee-jerk judgments we so desperately want to apply to people in power. The key to working with and understanding power therefore, is to consider multiple frames simultaneously.
So here’s a quick primer that is far from exhaustive and probably differs from other information out there. The important part is to simply begin to appreciate the variety.
Positional power, also known as legitimate power, gives us license to act and is derived from the role. When we stray outside the role, we lose our power, like the CEO when he leaves his office.
Power derived from wealth and success, like the aeronautical engineer, is called financial power or economic power.
Someone who is highly admired or respected, like the athlete or musician has referent power. This is the power influencers have.
Expert power refers to someone’s level of specialization in a particular arena. It reminds me of that joke about Neil Armstrong at a dinner party. Everyone is doing that one-upmanship thing that people do, but then suddenly Neil speaks up and simply says, “I’ve been to the moon.” Bam. Mic drop. Game over.
No conversation about power is complete without mentioning sociopolitical power, which encompasses multiple elements of our identity like race, gender, class, religion, nationality, ethnicity, education, physical and mental ability, gender and sexual orientation.
Lastly, and arguably most important to our navigation of power in general, we come to Personal power. What makes personal power so interesting and indispensable is that it gives us the capacity to act but doesn’t depend on anything external or social for its value. According to Diamond, “While personal power can’t be measured, its influence is incalculable. We describe personal power colloquially as what we use to “get by” in life.” Personal power is an incredible asset for influencing when you don’t have formal power. And building personal power is something everyone can do. I’ll talk more about this later in the blog.
Twenty years ago, I felt a lot of insecurity talking to other coaches. I’d literally just started out in the industry and had barely gotten my feet wet. I felt a bit like a beggar encroaching on their territory in search of a few handouts. Perhaps that’s a bit dramatic, but I bet you can relate. I walked into a very tangible power imbalance. They had expert power. I did not. Diamond refers to this as a low rank experience. She writes, “Regardless of social position, we all have low-rank moments. Low rank causes vulnerability: from being a beginner, to not knowing, needing help, and having a meltdown. Feelings of low rank are an indispensable facet of the human equation, and if we hate it in ourselves, we put our authority in jeopardy.”
My example of being a new coach is fairly typical of someone in the middle of a low-rank experience.
And here’s power rule #2) Because the thing about low rank is We ALWAYS FEEL IT!
Just like when you’re at a party with people who have more money that you do, you FEEL your lower socio-economic status. Or the first few days in a new job when you know you know less than everyone else, you FEEL your lower spot on the pecking order. No one has to tell you. In those early days of coaching, I FELT my lower status.
To manage low rank, Diamond advises embracing that vulnerability. “If you cannot fail, cannot be wrong, cannot make a mistake, you are a sitting duck. Your inviolable strength comes from your willingness to have nothing to lose. If you can’t lose an argument, walk away from a disagreement, admit defeat, or apologize for a mistake, you have placed your feelings of worth in the hands of another and are completely open to manipulation.” Gosh, well that’s kind of sobering. But she’s right. Because all those attempts to deny our vulnerability – like acting invincible or like we always know what we’re doing, or faking-it-until-you-make-it, well eventually that façade crumbles and falls apart, sometimes spectacularly. In fact, at some point if we actually do end up wielding power, because we lacked compassion and acceptance for ourselves when we didn’t have it, we tend to lack insight into those around us with lower rank. And this creates a blind spot where we forget all the places where we have rank over others making us more likely to abuse our power. Diamond writes, “Prizing high rank over low rank can make us more likely to act or react from a “one down” position, and misuse the power we have over others.”
By being more transparent and accepting of our vulnerability in those situations where we feel lower rank, we actually stand to foster higher levels of trust with others, which is weird because that is exactly the opposite of what our popular culture preaches. I’ve touched on this topic in earlier episodes exploring the role of the influencers in society and their efforts to appear unassailable and above criticism. Twenty years ago, when I first interacted with other coaches, accepting my low-rank meant showing up in all my green finery, declaring my newbie status and not pretending or hiding. As a recovering high performer, that was hard. Not gunna lie. But it was also a lot easier than pretending. I’ve gone that route before and it takes a LOT of energy to maintain the pretense and avoid detection. Can you say IMPOSTER SYNDROME?
Now fast forward to how I feel around coaches these days. It’s literally night and day. When I’m around other coaches – as I was earlier today on a Zoom call and many who I didn’t know, I wasn’t actually that conscious of their level of seniority as coaches – or mine, for that matter. I was just interacting with people who do what I do and talking about organizational trends. Perhaps there was someone on that call having a low-rank experience, but I didn’t see it. The fact is, after 20+ years as a coach, I possess much greater expert power, but I don’t think about it too much because I don’t have to. The low-rank experience is a thing of the past. At least in the realm of coaching. And this, right here, is another critical lesson about power that I am now going to emphasize.
#3) The more power you have, the less you think of it.
Power is, more often than not, invisible to those who have it. And that can set off a whole chain reaction of problems which I’m going to attempt to unpack next.
You’ve probably heard the quote by Lord Acton from the 19th century, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Why is it that humans find it so difficult to wield power in ethical and compassionate ways? Why does history spill over with so many horrific examples of corrupted power? In Diamond’s book, she describes stepping into power like being under the influence of drugs and she references 3 means by which this happens; disinhibition, illusory control and diminished empathy.
With disinhibition, we feel a certain immunity to social norms or expectations. Think Steve Jobs and his black turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers. His style reflected his disregard for convention and ironically, of course, spawned an iconic and emulated style. With disinhibition we may also have a tendency to weigh in on things beyond our knowledge. With illusory control, we tend to overestimate our chances of success (think captain of the Titanic) imagining we can influence events. With diminished empathy, we become more unconscious of others and are unable to take on their perspectives.
Remember the movie, The Devil Wears Prada? Miranda Priestly, the editor of Runway Magazine and the central antagonist, seemed to take great pleasure in keeping people on their toes with her quietly tyrannical nature. Because of her high positional power, she didn’t really see people in the lower ranks as people, which is why she was able to behave horribly towards them the way she did. She called every assistant Emily simply because that’s the name she remembered. She rejected the reality of a hurricane believing she should be able to fly out of Miami when every other aircraft was grounded.
In addition to these 3 means by which power corrupts, Diamond also details 3 corresponding opportunities that open up for people in power. Self-fulfilling prophecy, lack of feedback and lack of role clarity.
With self-fulfilling prophecy, your power lives in the minds of those around you. People treat you like a leader and may overlook or ignore your mistakes. This is when we find ourselves clumsily bowing and scraping in front of someone we’ve just learned is a celebrity or important. According to Diamond, “This is one of the reasons leaders feel like imposters – they sense that people’s judgment and treatment are unmoored from reality – that the accolades and admiration are sometimes undeserved.” And by the same token, you can imagine how easily people fall for what is being projected and overlook a more honest self-appraisal of their shortcomings.
Powerful leaders often suffer from a lack of feedback. People with lower rank are frequently reticent to give honest feedback. In the movie, The Devil wears Prada, the people who worked for Miranda were too afraid to contradict her, which only served to reaffirm Miranda’s perspective. She wasn’t a person anymore either. She had become a symbol to them.
Lastly, people with power often experience a lack of role conflict. What this means is that if someone’s power is sufficiently high enough that it travels with them everywhere they go (think HBO’s Succession), they miss out on the emotional and social development that comes from shifting between high and low ranking roles. The CEO I referenced earlier experienced the shift when he went home or to the grocery store or to Starbucks. I think of role conflict as ‘keeping it real’.
When you consider the corrupting means and opportunities that come into play around power, it’s not so hard to understand why power so often goes to someone’s head. But there’s one more piece to Diamond’s exploration into the corruption of power. Motivation. According to Diamond, one of the most powerful motives for misusing power comes from a feeling of powerlessness. In spite of the attainment of a powerful role, feeling powerful is not an assured outcome and this presents a troublesome gap. Power + insecurity = a very long list of real-life figures like, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Vladamir Putin, Elizabeth Holmes, and Robert Murdoch, just to name a few. Low rank is a stronger emotion than high-rank. As Diamond explains that from an evolutionary standpoint, its limbic. It’s a matter of life and death. But the good news is that low rank as a motivator is not inevitable. If we have appropriate self-management practices, we may be able to avoid joining the litany of powerful tyrants and corrupt business people.
In full transparency, this is what holds me back from playing more fully in the public arena. I honestly don’t want to navigate the kind of power that some very well-known folks in my industry have attained. The Brene Browns, Mel Robbins, Elizabeth Gilberts, Martha Becks, and Steven Coveys, etc. While I definitely feel pulled to amplify my work in the world, to expand beyond the limits of one on one coaching sessions, I’m also wary of clocking too many followers and ending up on too many people’s radars. Don’t worry. I’m nowhere near that vicinity … yet. I just so mystified with people who seek fame for its own sake. That is like asking for a horrible health diagnosis. Why invite that into your life?
Okay. So far in this blog there’s been a disproportionate amount of focus on overuse of power examples. And those examples are easy to spot. They’re common and that’s what makes many people wary about the topic of power in general. But the underuse of power can be just as destructive, though it is far more difficult to spot. In fact, I would argue that many leaders fail to recognize the problems their underuse of positional power creates, focusing only on their positive intentions. The thing to remember is that the only one who is confused about your positional power is you. Even if you have taken great strides to let everyone know that just because you were promoted nothing has changed, nothing could be further from the truth, and the people who now report in to you know it. Just because you don’t feel any different, it is a dangerous assumption to think they won’t either. Here are some examples to illustrate underuse of power. Have you seen any of these in action?
Imagine working with a colleague who frequently misses their deadlines which in turn, negatively impact yours. You’ve been taking some heat so you decide to speak to them, but so far, nothing has changed. Finally, after a few more missed deadlines, you decide to speak to your supervisor. They listen and are sympathetic, and you feel better thinking now things will get sorted. But it doesn’t take you more than a few days to realize that they haven’t done anything about it and things continue the way they were. Another missed deadline and your frustration starts to build. Again you meet with your supervisor and again they’re sympathetic, but no solution is forthcoming. You push them a little, and they tell you that your colleague has been under a lot of stress and they are just trying to support them to get back on track. I don’t have to tell you what happens next. Nothing. Same-o same-o.
Classic case of underuse of power. Your supervisor is failing to address a performance issue that is impacting the rest of the team. Your hands are tied because you lack the power to hold your colleague accountable. You talk to some of your other colleagues who’ve seen what’s going on, and are equally frustrated and you sense a dip in morale. Pretty soon, a significant chunk of your work day is taken up fixating on this situation that you have no control over, and before you know it, you’re starting to check out postings in other organizations. The depressing reality is that your supervisor is likely oblivious to their impact, persisting in their identity as a caring and compassionate boss. In all likelihood, if you did decide to leave the department, your departure would be met with shock.
Now imagine you consider yourself a highly collaborative leader. You take pride empowering people to make their own decisions and give them the autonomy to work out their challenges. When team members ask you for more clarification or the specifics of what you want them to do, you are more often than not heard turning the question back on them and asking what they think is needed. Sure, they may appear a little frustrated, but you know they will appreciate how much authority you are giving them. And so you are very surprised to discover that your team is way behind in their deliverables and you think perhaps they just need more encouragement. So you resolve to be even more positive and empowering, telling them you know how hard they’re working and you trust them to meet their goals. But the metrics keep slipping.
This is another classic case of underuse of power. As the ‘boss’ your job is to set clear expectations and make critical decisions. What looks like empowerment to you might look like abdication and abandonment to them. Without clear direction and oversight you’re dooming people to fail. Empowerment and autonomy are both good things. But unless the goal posts are clear and you hold accountability, you’re promoting a wild west environment that some employees may like, but many may not.
And of course misuse of power isn’t limited to the workplace.
Have you ever witnessed injustice or discrimination but stayed silent out of fear or apathy? Or
have you failed to support a charity that does important work even though you have the means?
Rule #4) Underuse of power is every bit as messy as overuse
I promised we’d circle back to personal power again and this is a good place to begin to wrap up this episode. Building your personal power is just a really smart thing to do for a number of reasons. It’s not limited by context so you can take it wherever you go – from a prickly strata council meeting to an important conversation with your adult siblings to a new proposal at work. Personal power gives you the capacity to act even if you lack formalized power. Its why people want to follow your lead, why your word has credibility. People with personal power tend to forge their own paths. They act as change agents seeing possibilities beyond the ways things are.
Diamond provides a simple model for understanding Personal Power. Imagine a triangle. On the first angle, you find your ‘capable self.’ This is the degree to which you believe in yourself and your ability to succeed. Your self-efficacy. It is your perseverance in the face of odds. Even if you don’t know how to solve a particular problem, you trust your ability to figure it out. You have proficiency at being and accepting YOU!
On the second angle, you find your ‘aware self.’ This is the degree to which you are able to self-reflect and understand your feelings and thoughts, knowing and taming your triggers. Higher levels of aware self mean you are able to analyze and make sense of your own and others behaviour staying above the fray and navigating complex situations more objectively. On the 3rd angle, you find your ‘purposeful self.’ This is the degree to which you are able to find meaning in challenges and hold a positive orientation towards life. It is your ability to take the big view. You learn from mistakes and take risks. You are able to integrate the learning from challenging situations. You are more resilient.
Building personal power is a life’s work and includes tapping your life experiences, investing in your personal development, and getting to know your personality traits. You can do this by building supportive communities for yourself, developing greater social and emotional development, perhaps through coaching or therapy, seeking feedback and challenges and contributing where you can. For more information about building personal power, I’ll put Julie Diamond’s website in the show notes.
Remember, power is a complex game. It is a ubiquitous force in our lives, present in every aspect of society, from politics to personal relationship. While it can be a force for good, it can also be easily corruptible creating the potential for abuse. Personal power can be our secret super power for navigating the complex dynamics of power in our lives. Personal power helps us to show up more authentically, compassionately and principled. By cultivating our personal power, we can become more effective leaders, partners and community members, using our power to create positive change and build a better world for ourselves and those around us.
Remember …
#1) Power is morally neutral.
#2) We ALWAYS FEEL low rank!
#3) The more power you have, the less you think of it.
#4) Underuse of power is every bit as messy as overuse and lastly …
#5) Personal power is the ultimate accessory. Bring it with you everywhere!
If you’re interested in hearing more about the power assessment tool I mentioned at the beginning, the Diamond Power Index, shoot me a message so I can tell you more about it.
