Leadership Lessons - 3 : Understanding and managing Power relations

 Leadership Lesson-3

One of the most important lessons of leadership is the way one understands the sources of power and how one uses different modes of power in different contexts.

The paradox of power in leadership positions is that those who use least of it often sustains more power of influence over a relatively long time.

Power is not what you have ; what others perceive you have. Hence power is also to a certain extent the perceived ability to influence through persuasion, consensus or coercion.

Power is about perceptions. Perceptions are determined to a large extent by locations of people, in terms of geography, history,(space and time) culture, language, society and economy.

Power is also relative and dynamic. The most powerful powerful person can be completely powerless in an intensive care unit of a hospital. Those with excellent communicative power in one language can be very powerless in another language /speech community.

The conventional use of power is vertical, based on the notion of 'power over'. Religions operate on this assumptions based on the omnipotent power 'over' and in society this operate through 'patriarchy ,',caste hierarchies within the mind , class and racial hierarchies. And most of the government and institutional hierarchies use the 'power over ' mode.

But transformative leaders know that power is basically a matter of perceptions and delusions of self . We have delusions, mild or strong, about our knowledge, authority, positions and number of others.

For those in power, there will always be soothsayers who further boost such delusions. Hence it is important to outgrow such delusions to develop a critical self-awareness to be more realistic and understand the world beyond the insulated world of power that surround you.

Those who understand these always work more horizontally with the notion of 'power with ' rather than ' power over' '

Those long term change makers always work on 'power within' to inspire ' power with ' to transform collective ' power to' make change happen. It is the 'power within ' enable the courage of conviction to speak truth to power. All.great leaders in history used 'power within ' to transform the world within, world around and world around. Martin Luther King, Che Guvera, Mother Theresa, and Nelson Mandela belonged to such breed of great leaders with immense source of 'power within ' to trigger courage of conviction to stand up, speak out with a fearless mind and be resilient in the midst of adverse power.

Gandhi became Mahatma due to the deep sense of ' power within '

Those who acquire and use power due to a job /designation /political office will lose it when they cease to have such roles /positions of power. Those senior IAS officials who were arrogant in power becomes decent people after their retirement !

Those who know the delusional and temporal character of power will constantly make an effort to be humble. Because delusions of power can make all of us arrogant.

Fighting our own internal sense of arrogance requires constantly outgrowing our delusions about the self.

Many tend to get carried away by the power perceptions within the self. An ability to constantly outgrow the illusions of power and paraphernalia that come with power positions help you to understand and learn from others.

Such an empathic understanding of power also help to understand others and make change happen within and beyond.

JS Adoor

To be continued