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.

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…)

Bob Sutton, in his blog post 12 Things Good Bosses Believe, emphasizes how the power of a role inevitably creates blind spots. Number 1 on his list:

I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it’s like to work for me

And he concludes with Number 12:

Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.

I like how he says it and shows it so bluntly: power corrupts.

But it is not the power of the role alone. It is the fit between the power of the person and the power of the role. Think of it like clothing. The role or position is a piece of clothing, but the body who wears it has a lot to do with how it fits, to stretch an analogy just a bit. (more…)

Randy Cohen, the New York Times’ ethicist, recently opined on the court ruling that ordered Google to release the name of the anonymous blogger whose site Skanks in NYC was devoted to slandering a fashion model:

Has anonymous posting, though generally protected by law, become so toxic that it should be discouraged?

This issue has gotten my attention as I’m preparing a workshop on Bullying in the Public Sphere. I often find myself drawn to read comments on news sites, drawn no doubt by the same impulse that makes me crane my neck as I drive by an accident. Unmoderated comment sections provide an un-chaperoned space for every adolescent impulse we’ve ever repressed. The comments rapidly devolve into nasty, name-calling, deliberately inflammatory and hateful. It’s this impulse (what possible evolutionary purpose might it serve?) that the mainstream media depend on for their fortunes, and is no doubt why there continues to be unmoderated comments sections after every article. (more…)

The Process Work Institute is about to begin the process of applying for regional accreditation. My job is to help spearhead this process, and one of the tasks is to create assessments of the programs, of student progress, of individual courses, and of faculty. I’ve been up to my elbows this summer studying the literature on program and faculty assessments, and I have to confess, there’s something about the logic in it all that’s appealing. Even though I’m a progressive education fan from way back (Antioch College ’81) the literature on aligning goals and outcomes and performance is refreshing. It’s something of a relief coming away from philosophies, ideologies and concepts of human development to the practicality of metrics and asking (and then defining!) does it work? [I also read Paul Tough's book, Whatever it Takes, about Geoffrey Canada's Harlem charter school as well as other books on recent charter schools' successes in closing the achievement gap, and have newfound respect for the question, does it work?] (more…)

Remember this Nike ad of Charles Barkley?

Barkley went on:

I don’t believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models…. It’s not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn’t like it, they said, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.” Parents have to take better control.

This past winter, Portland’s honeymoon phase with its first openly gay mayor came to a trainwreck of an ending when the news broke (on Inauguration Day) that Adams lied about his sexual relationship with an 18 year old legislative intern.

Today it’s Edwards and his affairs. it seems each month, even week, there is another fallen angel, a politician, athlete, actor, celebrity, CEO, or person in a leadership position tumbling from a great height.

And usually at some point in the endless discussion, someone raises the point that he or she was a role model, and has greatly disappointed people.

I don’buy into this role model business. Whether or not you’re a role model is in the eye of the beholder. In which case, anyone can be a role model and not know it. if someone looks up to you, whether you are aware of it or not, you’re a role model for someone. Does that then stand to reason that you have a responsibility to uphold that person’s s image of you? Definitely not.

Maybe it’s my background in psychology but I don’t see it as the role model’s responsibility for not disappointing the one who looks up to him or her. Maturity, in my mind, requires the ability to be able to love or admire someone in their humanness, not in their super-humanness. We will inevitably be disappointed by our parents, our loved ones, a mentor. Are they at fault for not being perfect, or is it our responsibility to grapple with the fact of human complexity?

Iâ??m a cyclist, and in summer, I spend hours and hours sharing the road with cars. Mostly I try to avoid very busy roads, but at times, itâ??s inevitable. Thanks goodness Iâ??ve never had an accident involving a car, but there have been a few tense moments, mostly involving Winnebagos on Highway 101 on the Oregon Coast. They always seem to pass me just as the shoulder gives way, on a steep ascent coming around a major headland, with a 20 mph gust of wind coming from the north, making my bike wobble in one direction, while the draft of the Winnebago pulls me sideways in the other direction. Itâ??s not pleasant.

But cars and bikes are a huge issue where I live in Portland, Oregon. Weâ??re increasingly known for our progressive bike politics; weâ??re the only city of our size with the â??platinumâ?? award from the League of American Bicyclists. There are several active and effective bike advocacy groups and a fantastic bike politics blog run by Jonathan Maus. I really admire Jonathanâ??s blog. Bike politics is a contentious topic, and there is a diverse and vocal group of frequent posters on his blog. One of the hot button issues is that of cars and bikes sharing the road. In the wake of several hit and runs, deaths, and road rage incidents (both car drivers and bike riders raging in the different cases), thereâ??s been vigorous debates about cars, riders, safety, and whoâ??s at fault. Is a car always at fault, since itâ??s bigger? What about cyclists and their responsibility?

Anyway, I was thinking about this, riding my bike down Hwy 101, south from Waldport to Yachats, enjoying a great tail wind, reaching speeds over 30 mph. I love having to slow down on my bike to come under the speed limit. But at that speed, I get even more vigilant of cars coming out on my right. Especially on a tourist route like 101. As a rider, Iâ??m not always visible since Iâ??m not directly in the driverâ??s line of vision. So I have this habit of raising my hand, sort of a like a wave. But in honesty, itâ??s actually more like a commanding â??stop!â?? The intent is to make myself visible, to get the attention of the driver, but at times, it feels more like a sentry signaling, â??Halt!â?? in no uncertain terms.

So there I was with a lot of time on my hands, thinking about this, and wondering, how is that hand signal perceived? Do people feel waved at, or do they feel commanded? Do they sense my anxiety, or do they see a cyclist, zooming along in a cycling kit, looking speedy and athletic, raising her hand in an arrogant salute?

Whatever arrogance I communicate is in fact fear. My bike and I weigh about 145 pounds, and the car weighs 5,000, not to mention whatever else velocity adds to the impact. Does the driver really identify with the 5,000 pound weapon he or she is driving? Just because they are in a bigger vehicle, do they actually feel more powerful on the road than the bike? On the bikeportland blog, and in many discussions, this is assumed to be the case. But it warrants a closer look.

Personally, I donâ??t think bigger size automatically translates into an awareness of power. I think this is the problem with many kinds of clashes involving power differentials. The person with less physical power, or material wealth, or resources insists on their lower status vis-Ã -vis the other; and yet the one with greater size, wealth, resource etc., does not always feel that way. There are psychological dynamics which intervene into what would otherwise be a straightforward social-political issue.

My friend Jan and I were riding earlier this summer in the foothills of Mt. Hood, on some lovely back country roads. It was a glorious summer day and we were enjoying a terrific descent, down into a beautiful valley. As we came around a long winding curve, we saw a car up ahead, slowing down in the middle of the road. Uncertain whether he was turning, stopping, or what, we had to slow down in the middle of a hill, which is difficult. And we didnâ??t know whether to pass him on the right, or if he was turning right. His brake lights kept going on and off, blinkers going left, then right. I felt my anger rise. Didnâ??t he see us? Does he think heâ??s alone on the road? I started to mutter something aggressive under my breath as we neared his car, but Jan silenced me. Look, she said, heâ??s lost. I looked in the car, and saw an elderly man, with a map and papers in his hand. He was leaning out the window, looking every which way, and clearly he was lost or looking for something or someone. Jan rolled up to his window, and said, can I help you? Are you lost? He said he was looking for a house number. I can appreciate how frustrating it is looking for a house out in the country. Driveways can be a half mile from the house, and the house numbers are often hard to read. We stopped and tried to help him for a few minutes, but not once did he acknowledge us, thank us, or talk to us. And then, he just turned around in the road, blocking us off completely, and took off in the other direction. Jan and I looked at each other, amazed.

I guess this guy was really frustrated, anxious or just angry at being lost. Iâ??m sure it had nothing to do with us as cyclists. But as I rode off, I thought of my parents. Theyâ??re great drivers, but they are getting older, and I know they feel more nervous on the road than they used to. They feel as much a victim of the 5,000 pounds of metal as a pedestrian or bicyclist, unsure of themselves, and unsure of other drivers.

Thatâ??s the problem with assigning power to the one with greater size. It doesnâ??t take into account how people feel, how they identify. A purely material way of determining power misses the fact that how we feel about ourselves, or how we feel inside often trumps the outer trappings of power. No matter how rich, powerful, or strong someone is, if she grew up with abusive parents or was badly bullied as a child, chances are she feels less powerful than her wealth or size would have us imagine. Psychologically, powerlessness tends to trump power. Hurt, abuse, insecurity, anxieties, itâ??s unfortunate, but these pesky little things have the power to dwarf the biggest stick, even 5,000 pounds of metal. Which is probably why I will continue my authoritarian salute as I pass by motorists. At the risk of offending them, I canâ??t trust that they are really aware of their 5,000 pound advantage.

I’ve got the task of developing a performance evaluation process with and for faculty at the Process Work Institute. We’re a small training institute, and while we have had many different forums for feedback and evaluation, we’ve not created a standardized process that is tied to accountability.

It’s a tricky process. As a colleague pointed out, it’s been a steep learning curve. We’ve run into many snarls en route to developing this performance evaluation procedure. The topic is a minefield, on both sides, for the evaluated and the evaluator. For starters, it’s basically about being judged – am I good or bad? And trust. Can I trust who’s evaluating me? What about the disgruntled colleague or student who has it in for me? Or that the feedback is filtered through the personality of the other person, complete with their values, beliefs about me, biases, etc. And of course, now that we are moving towards performance evaluation as mandatory, it raises the twin issues of motivation and resistance. What’s in it for me? Why should I jump that hoop? And do these standards relate to my own personal growth goals? And probably one of the biggest difficulties is that, like any tight knit organization, we sit comfortably in a single loop learning style – we have our way of looking at things and doing things, and when it comes to performance evaluation, we can police ourselves thank you very much.

But of course we can’t. And we know that. So we want the opportunity to reflect on ourselves, to a degree. Because it’s also human nature to bristle at anyone who points out any kind of flaw, even if they call it a “challenge” or “opportunity.” We know negative feedback and criticism, no matter what perfume it has on.

I could write volumes on this, and others have, better than I can. So, the point I want to focus on is the question of accountability. Why do we, or does any organization, need evaluations, and accountability procedures? Why does bureaucracy have to intervene here?

As I ponder it, I think the real meaning of performance evaluation is a cost analysis: does what you add to a group outweigh what you cost your colleagues, customers, and organization? That sounds harsh to think that who we are has a price tag, but it does. Mostly, we add value. But it’s often hard to see the price others pay in getting along with us. Even our talents come with a price. I have a great talent at seeing the bigger picture, and this comes with the cost of frequently neglecting details and making small mistakes that definitely cause some teeth grinding downstream. Or, if I am difficult to collaborate with, I make the atmosphere tense, if I derail the conversation, neglecting the deadline that the other team members are trying to meet, I cost those around me in terms of energy, emotional wear and tear.

The problem isn’t what we cost; the problem is not knowing that cost, and not taking measures to reduce the difference between our value and our costs. For instance, if I am sloppy with details (as I am), and I send out information with the wrong date, this means that the office staff or my organizer has to spend extra time chasing me down to correct dates, sending out corrections, and responding to questions because people have been misinformed. In order to mitigate that cost, I need to do something – apologize, offer to help write the emails or mail out the corrections, or offer to pay extra money for the extra time involved. If I don’t, if I just assume someone else will clean up that mess, and anyway, mistakes happen, then laws, regulatory agencies, performance reviews, police forces, etc., spring up to fulfill the function I neglect.

Whatever we miss doing for ourselves, we outsource to another body. But this escalates the problem, and brings in force or power of some kind. If two people can’t resolve a fight alone, then a third party comes in to resolve it for them. When we outsource it to another we use power in place of natural consequences.

Barbara Coloroso, a parenting expert, uses the concept of natural consequences in parenting. Rather than controlling behavior through force or might (Do so because I say so!) children should learn that what they do has consequences for which they are responsible. You throw a cigarette butt out your house window and start a fire next door that threatens your home as well. You see and experience the consequences of your action, and are forced to take steps to counter it. But we seldom have that proximity to the effects of our action. We have lost contact between cause and effect. So laws are created that replace natural consequences with force. Don’t do this because the government says so. Now it’s impersonal, and there is no longer a reason attached. The violator, the one who throws the butt out the window, whether he obeys the law or not, is still dissociated from the loss of habitat, cost to taxpayers, homelessness, and the myriad issues caused by that one action.

Getting back to the issue of performance evaluation – I don’t deal with my sloppiness, and eventually the office staff complains. So a new law gets posted: if you make a mistake on your dates, you are responsible for making the correction, or something like that. But now it’s bureaucracy, an arbitrary law. I might improve, but I probably won’t. Even more significantly, I haven’t become more aware of what I cost.

I believe this is one of the reasons evaluators chafe at their role. Not only because they may not be trained for it, but also because they are recruited into the role because the person isn’t evaluating themselves sufficiently. The function really belongs to the one being evaluated. That’s why, in the way we do feedback at the Process Work Institute, we make a big point of training the ones giving and getting feedback to take the other roles.

The one receiving feedback should already know that feedback – it’s only coming to them from the outside because they somehow missed it. Feedback we don’t know about ourselves catches us by surprise, and is the worst kind. It hurts the most to receive criticism about something we don’t know about ourselves. But we should. We should be in touch with our cost, and have a sense of how we are received. On the other side of the equation, giving feedback is hardest when the person receiving it doesn’t already know about. It’s for these reasons that the real learning involved in evaluation is less about substance (what should I focus on) and more about the process (Do I already know this, and if not, why not?).

And the big question is, why don’t we? There’s been a lot written about this, especially recently. It’s a well know problem in social psychology that people chronically overrate their performance (unless they are depressed). Cornell psychologist David Dunning, PhD. is one of the top researchers in this field. He’s found that in North American culture, people overestimate their abilities, and that the least competent performers inflate their abilities the most. No one really knows for sure why this is the case. People are definitely prone to bias. They overrate the particular areas they excel at, and minimize the importance of those areas they don’t excel at. For instance, people with verbal ability would overestimate the role verbal ability, in contrast to mathematical ability, plays in intelligence. Or task focused people would rate task orientation as the most important leadership trait on a questionnaire about what makes a good leader.

Another reason we don’t see ourselves more clearly is due to fundamental attribution error, meaning, we tend to give credit to ourselves for a positive outcome, and lay the blame elsewhere for a negative outcome. Additionally, we seldom receive accurate feedback about ourselves. People tend to give each other more positive feedback to their faces, but say negative things behind their back. Finally, people lack the information they need to fully assess themselves; the paradox is that our incompetence makes us incompetent to accurately judge ourselves.

But another reason is that we don’t see ourselves as part of the whole. It’s one of the reasons we struggle to see the environmental impact of our decisions, or the nutritional and health impact of our behaviors. Social marketers who try to educate the public about health issues such as skin cancer, AIDS awareness, smoking, and drunk driving, have to contend with this problem a lot: How do we get people to relate to the consequences of their actions? In organizations, how do we get people to identify with the organizational itself, not just their job, team, or silo?

Power is used as the intermediary between people, between individuals and whole. Rules and law force us to be responsible to each other, to think of the whole when we have lost our ability to do so. We’ve made a big leap from performance evaluation to politics, but I think the common denominator is the essence of organization – association and affiliation. When we don’t affiliate with others, we outsource that task to the government or bureaucracy, and then inveigh against its restrictive rules and regulations. But we can and should police ourselves, not out of a sense of duty or morality, but out of the sense of connection and community. It reminds me of how Gandhi understood freedom – not as the ability to do whatever you wanted, but as liberation from the prison of dualism –  that we are separate from each other. Democracy has always been a tension between its two parts: demos (people, community) and kratie (power, law). While we struggle to comprehend community, to identify with the demos, we depend on kratie, the power to force affiliation, but in the absence of heart, it becomes mere obedience.

It’s been quiet on the blog, but not due to a lack of activity. It’s riding season, and I keep forgetting how much it takes to get in shape early in the season. Reach the Beach in 100 degrees was a sufferfest. But that’s not the only thing keeping me busy. Last Tuesday was the Oregon primary, and the media descended on Portland, along with Obama, Bill and Chelsea Clinton. I’m a sponsor of the third grade at Rigler Elementary, as part of the I Have a Dream foundation, which was one of the organizations taking part in a community service project with the Clintons. So there I was, on Sunday morning, with a small group of kids and adults planting tomatoes and painting murals in a community garden with Bill and Chelsea. After an hour of cameras clicking, tomato planting and painting, I hopped on my bike, and whizzed across town to Tom McCall Waterfront Park to join a throng of 75,000 people listening to Barack Obama.

But with all that activity and excitement, one image keeps replaying in my mind. I had an opportunity to talk for a few minutes with Chelsea Clinton, without the media or other adults around. We chatted about nothing in particular, just small talk about community projects, teaching, and the like. I avoided asking anything political, or about her mother’s campaign, and yet I noticed she studiously avoided eye contact. Now, maybe I’m making a big deal out of this, but she kept her eyes downcast the whole time. Reading into it I got the sense that the public has to be a frightful thing for her.

And this is where this post winds its way back to leadership and power. I’ve been asking, what is it about leadership, about power, that lends itself to abuse or corruption? The problem is, though, the question doesn’t differentiate the person from the role. The leadership role and the person inhabiting that role are not one and the same. Stepping into a role is like stepping into a vortex of energies. You become a target for projections of all kinds: you are admired, hated, feared, seen as a role model, castigated for failing to be a role model. Your role represents qualities that you personally could never fulfill. And the role, as I pointed out in Public Life, Private Selves, has qualities and features that can take on a life of their own. So fully investigating power and its use and abuse has to take into account not just the individual, and what he or she does with power, but the role, and what influence or affect the role has on the individual.

When leaders or those in power are criticized, even if justified, too much is made of their personality, which leads to a dead end conversation: people in power are corrupt, psychopathic or evil. But if leadership can truly be everyday leadership, something for us all to share, then knowing more about the role and how projection and expectation factor into it, is important. There’s a reality to projection, to social expectation, and stereotyping. Studies show that expectations can play a determining role in performance. If teachers expect students to do poorly, students tend to do, well, poorly. And vice versa. High expectations can raise performance. I have had both experiences. I’ve stepped into the role of facilitator, and people expect me to know, and somehow I always find something brilliant to say. Likewise, I’ve been in the facilitator role when it was “take a shot at the leader” day, and well, it’s no fun.

Back to Chelsea. I kept thinking about her childhood, growing up hearing and seeing difficult, critical and nasty things being said about your parents, about you. What it must be like to be in the public eye, while her father’s infidelities were daily fodder for months on end. Then, just as things subside, your mother runs for President, and there you are again, in the public eye, open season. My eyes would be downcast too. Do I want to be open to whatever some stranger might say to me? Or even what they might think? How would I protect myself from that? How do we survive the roles we’re in? Step one is to become aware that we are in roles, that what happens to us is not just personal, but belongs to the role. Peter Block, who writes about leadership and about consulting, says, when working as a consultant, “take nothing personally before 6 pm.” In other words, what happens to you is addressed to the role, not only you.

Too often, our political leaders only embody the role, but not the personal part. But occasionally, there are amazing glimpses of the role and the person, separate yet relating. Later that day, Obama displayed that skill, something I have seldom seen public figures do:. He said, “I tried to run a positive campaign. But I haven’t always been successful in that. It’s hard. When someone whacks you, you get hurt, and want to whack back.” There’s a human in that role. Are we ready for that? Meanwhile, the media say: toughen up, it’s part of the deal to be whacked, whack back, and the American public need to know their leaders can be tough and take it. Or do we? I’d like to ask Chelsea what she thinks. Her eyes, or what I project into them, tell me otherwise.

I don’t believe leadership is best served by the parallels drawn to war and sports. It doesn’t capture the sense of service and eldership at the heart of leadership. But I do see one reason why military and sports metaphors are so often used to describe leadership challenges. War and sport have in common the need to develop mental toughness, so what you learn can be done under terrific psychological and physical stress. For an athlete, learning what to do is only part of the preparation; learning to do it on game day is another. That’s the difference between just being athletic, and being a top competitor. The professional athlete’s training includes psychological toughness by simulating game day conditions: high stakes, bad calls, mean crowds, horrible weather, and ruthless opponents. Because every athlete and coach knows that once you cross a threshold of stress, learning and thinking goes out the window. If you get triggered by stress, choking is inevitable. (more…)