How and when does power become abusive? I’ve explored this topic here frequently, and while I don’t think power is inherently abusive or corrupting, without education and training on how to use it, abuse of power does and will happen. Hence the title of this blog.

One thing often overlooked in leadership training (which I believe should focus more on power and how to use it well) is that we do not enter positions of power as blank slates, but come into positions of power with our personal story of power. We grew up in a context of power relations, and how we enact the role of the leader is influenced by a social identity forged in part by power relations. Preparing for a position of power should start with an inventory of what one has already experienced about power.

As a coach and trainer, one thing I constantly see is that we seldom outgrow the power identity we grew up with. Not only that, our earliest identity of power  asserts itself under threat or stress. Growing up smaller than the other kids, and being picked on in school, growing up poor or disadvantaged, following an older brother or sister who did better in school, or being the only Jew in the town, all of these experiences are like unresolved wounds or complexes that stay with us, and influence our self-esteem, relations with others, and more generally, how we perform in our roles. We lead with and from our wounds.

And wounding can come from both a deficit and an excess of power, and the complicated mix of both. There is no doubt, as research confirms, low status is wounding. Lack of access to resources, systemic oppression, low self-esteem, internalized lowered expectations and stereotyping influences health, opportunity, success, well-being, happiness, etc. But we are also wounded psychologically by exclusivity, unearned privilege, entitlement, and the “price of the ticket,” fitting into an elite club whose membership is the cost of our authenticity.

But our early experiences with power can also be affirming and enabling. We are empowered through the connection with our lineage, a knowledge of ancestors, connection with the community or with a spiritual belief. We can also transform our earliest suffering into self-esteem and empowerment by awareness of having endured or survived hardship.

Yet unless we develop awareness of these initial experiences, and our unresolved wounds, the temptation to use the power of the role to soothe our pain is too great. Like an addict using a substance to flee a miserable state of mind, power becomes an artificial boost, a ‘substance’ to soothe and alleviate an internal sense of low status. But this isn’t an immutable fate. It can be worked on with focus and self-awareness. I’m looking forward to exploring this and more on the intersection of the person and the role in the Leadership Lab in a couple of weeks.

Well, it’s a wrap…. almost. We’re shipping boxes of binders, exhibits, books, and hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents tomorrow to the accrediting commission, and now it’s a waiting game. It’s been a grueling year – the first application last spring, and now this past fall, responding to their comments and concerns, we had to significantly revise and re-submit.

We hit some real stumbling blocks, some moments when we were all tempted, seriously tempted, to just throw up our hands and walk away. The project was a total meditation on power and effort, of digging deep and pushing forward. Yet at each obstacle, the question came up, is it worth it?

It’s extremely hard to know, because of the psychology (and economics) of sunk cost and opportunity cost. Sunk cost is an economic term for the money or sweat equity you’ve put into something. And opportunity cost is about the future: for every minute or dollar you spend on something, there’s something else you’re not spending it on. And it’s extremely hard to tell which is the better route. Knowing when to push and when it’s not worth it is extremely hard, psychologically. We get attached all the time, to our detriment, because of sunk costs: relationships, jobs, habits, military campaigns, etc.

With this project we had to consider each time we hit an obstacle (and sometimes it seemed to happen daily), what is the future benefit? Can we imagine it? Can we weigh this level of effort against the future cost? How do we know we’re not just hanging on because of sunk cost?

Working with change of any kind, whether with people or systems, understanding the psychology of investment and loss, is critical. Just as I was cooking on this all, my friend Carol Zahner, sent me this link, The Upside of Quitting.

As I wrote in one of my last posts, I’m working on my seminar, The Leadership Lab, in Australia at the end of the year. I came across this interview this morning with Sally Jenkins, award winning sports journalist and author, with  Lance Armstrong, of the best-seller, It’s Not About the Bike. She talks about performing under pressure, and  compares writing to sports. I love how she makes the link between the body and mind in the writing process. Read the full interview here.

I’m starting to prepare my workshop on the Gold Coast of Australia in December. This year’s workshop is called The Leadership Lab. It focuses on the inner development of the leader, something I’m very interested in.  I’m fascinated by what is not included in leadership development. Conventional leadership training  usually focuses on 1) so-called soft (yet hard to master) skills such as communication, coaching, team work, 2) technical skills such as strategy, financial management, negotiation,  innovation, leading change, and 3) power, influence, and understanding one’s own leadership styles.

What’s missing though, is learning how to use your skills under pressure. The moment is not the classroom. If you don’t practice under stress, you can’t perform under stress. It’s that simple. Cops understand this, the military understands this, athletes understand this. But leadership training doesn’t always understand this. You cannot access your tools under stress unless you have trained to access your tools under stress. Arny Mindell focuses on this aspect of facilitation in what he calls “the second training.”  (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot about habits lately. Everywhere I look, habits seem to play a role. Making headway on solving our biggest social problems ultimately comes down to changing ordinary, everyday habits. How do we switch to using public transportation instead of driving, or using reusable grocery bags instead of paper or plastic? Whether we’re tackling health care, the environment, or the global financial crisis, individual’s habits, behavior and choices play a role.

Closer to home, I’ve been thinking about my blog. I’ve had it for almost 3 years now, and my goal has been to write more regularly, ideally twice a week. And for three years, I’ve failed to attain that goal. What’s most frustrating is that I’m a fairly disciplined person. I exercise regularly. I answer emails promptly. I balance my bank accounts every month. I floss twice a day. The list goes on. So why do I fail to post twice a week? Well, here’s what I tell myself: it must not be important enough to me. I’m lazy. I’m undisciplined. I must be ambivalent about it. I make other things more important. I don’t take myself seriously. All of which has truth. But none of which helps me change. Here’s the simple reason. I haven’t posted regularly because I haven’t developed the habit. (more…)

I was browsing through some old movies the other day and came across Love Story. Remember Love Story, Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw? The line the movie made famous was Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry. I was a teenager when the movie came out, and I thought that sounded pretty cool. Looking back, I think it’s ridiculous. If anything, love means having to say you’re sorry… often. Or as John Lennon said, love means having to say you’re sorry every 15 minutes. (more…)

I can’t help but be influenced by the end of year recaps at this time of year –the best of this, the worst of that. It’s definitely a time to reflect, review, and plan. I love spending a few days, usually somewhere between Christmas and New Years, reflecting on  the past year, what I’ve accomplished,  learned, did, things I didn’t do, and then meditating on my sense of the coming year. It’s not just about goals – but also about what I sense is on the horizon. I try to feel my way into what the coming year will bring. What tendencies are stirring? Fantasies? What have I been daydreaming about? What projects are coming my way? Things that feel really important, I’ll work into more practical goals – I’ll set small benchmarks, assign them a time and place. I’ll look into my schedule and prioritize.

Looking backwards is fun, too. One of the things I like doing is reading through my agenda, journal and writing, seeing what I have done over the past year. Sometimes I read back several years, and two things always jump out at me. First, I’m always pleasantly surprised to see that I really have accomplished some things. I know, it sound a bit crazy, But I am one of those people who suffer from feeling there is way more to do than what I have time for. So seeing the things that have actually happened is always refreshing.

The other thing I notice is that even as I change, I stay the same. I think we all d0. We really do have theme songs, and no matter where we end up, we have something very recognizable about us. I saw this recently, since I just launched my newly revised website, thanks to the collective genius of Team Diamond (Suzie Schofield, Jim Parker and Bryan Capitano). I was looking for documents related to my web server and it gave me an opportunity to look at websites past. Like Scrooge in his vision, I dropped in on earlier iterations of myself. So what is it that didn’t change? Well, looking back at my earlier web presence, before blogs, before Web 2.0, before social media, I was playing around with different ways to create community with my website. Are there any readers out there who remember:

The Village Well? An email string on research and creativity?

Hi-5 – top 5 favorites submitted by different contributors?

The Process Work Wiki, or pwiki, which later was Processworkinternational?

OK, enough of the past for now, soon I’ll be drunkenly singing Auld Lang Syne and making promises I won’t want to keep ….

Wishing you all happy holidays, and thanks for reading. It’s a pleasure to not change along with you all!

Last post I talked about what makes a good learner, sharing some of what I presented at my seminar in Australia, Beyond our Grasp: The Art, Science and Flow of Learning, Performance and Change. This post deals with the challenges of giving and getting feedback and coaching others’s performance.

Having to give and get feedback is a topic that generates a lot of conversation- whether we are teachers, managers, supervisors, or coaches. A lot of the literature on feedback and performance centers around the problem of information: What information is relevant? From what sources do we gather it? How do we deliver it? And for the one receiving feedback, the same: What do I think my strengths and weaknesses are? Am I open to the feedback? But often overlooked is the conversation between the giver and receiver of feedback. Feedback is a process, not a delivery. At its best, it’s a conversation and an exploration. Let’s look at the two parts of the conversation.
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I just finished teaching a seminar in Australia, Beyond our Grasp: The Art, Science and Flow of Learning, Performance and Change. I really enjoyed working with a new topic, and having the opportunity to trial new ideas and learn together with such an enthusiastic and experienced group of participants.

We looked at the challenge of learning and outcomes: when learning is tied to an outcome, a funny thing happens. The outcome is experienced as external to ourselves. Our learning is now complicated by the presence and pressure of someone or something outside ourselves –  a teacher or program requirements, the organization’s goals, a manager, coach, or teacher, a professional association, or even a result or number. Even when the goal is self-assigned, for instance, quitting smoking or losing weight, because we are changing something about ourselves, it creates an inner conflict: one part of us against or trying to change another. Even the tiniest sense of conflict or lack of consensus with our self-interest can torpedo the whole enterprise. This is why research on workplace motivation shows conclusively that intrinsic motivation trumps external motivation, including paid incentives:

people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all.

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I’m enjoying teaching an advanced symposium this semester on applying Process Work at the Process Work Institute. We’re looking at the challenges of the so-called Wanderjarhe – the post training phase of developing mastery and becoming a craftsperson. In the Medieval European tradition once the apprenticeship was completed, in order for the apprentice to become a craftsman he had to gain experience moving from one town to the other, applying his skills in different settings, and under different craftsmen. This became a very crucial part of the development of the craftsperson.

Fast forward a few centuries, and the still need remains, but the traditions have changed. Moving from mastery of (often theoretical) knowledge to mastery of craft takes a long time. In some professions the route is straightforward: you gain an entry level position and work your way up. But if people go into private practice or consulting, or become sole proprietors of a professional service business like counseling, coaching, psychotherapy, or facilitating, it’s a more circuitous route. In a way, it’s a start-up. But where a tech start up requires a big infusion of cash, starting up a business that is your own professional service requires a big infusion of, well, other things. Here are some of the things we’ve been discussing in class. These are true for anyone starting their own business, non-profit, association, or pursuing a cause. (more…)