“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
This quote from Frederick Douglass, the 19th Century African American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher, and author came to my mind as I listened to Brené Brown’s important and interesting Podcast with Scott Sonenshein---Organizational Psychologist, Professor of Management, author---on the need for a different kind of leadership to champion significant organizational change. And that naturally led me to muse about various power scenarios---specifically power over and power with---and how those simple examples of paradigms can readily clash in the powder kegs of post Pandemic workplaces. In the aftermath of these past 2 years, people who felt oppressed in many areas of their work-life have rejected the prior status quo. The Great Resignation is a condemnation of their former perceptions of trauma, disrespect, inequality, and domineering, toxic environments. Leaders who are incapable of understanding the sincerity and deep-seated rage that fuels this movement do so at their peril.
Simply put, Power over leaders seek to dominate and coerce people into performing/producing. Power with leaders seek to engage and involve people in the work of making a difference, achieving a purpose---whatever the job itself may entail.
A Power Over leader will want to continue to dominate, even if they try to call their style something softer, more acceptable in contemporary parlance. But power over leaders may still have a hard time listening, really hearing what employees are saying---understanding what the noise is all about, or even believing that what they’re hearing is true. If power over type of leaders have given employees more money, perhaps even grudgingly, and maybe even lightened up on the stress level, it’s likely they’re thinking ‘what more do they want---these employees??? They need to be thankful they have jobs at all and just quit complaining’. Leaders who are used to dominating and not being questioned, are the ones who’ll have a hard time adjusting to the current climate---and perhaps never will. They can’t see that their time is over any more than they can hear that what their employees are telling them is important and true.
Power with leaders will hopefully understand that re-entry after these 2 terrible years will not be simple—will not be just a matter of returning to the old workplace and getting back in the groove. That groove is GONE! The old workplace may look the same but the people re-emerging from the experiences of the past 2 years are definitely NOT the same. They’ve been changed forever and cannot be cajoled into becoming the old team again. They aren’t the same people, even if they look the same. Re-emerging into some form of functional unit will take a steady hand and a light touch; gentle expectations well-articulated; sincere conversations within a safe holding environment. Everyone has been traumatized and people process trauma in many different ways.
While it’s neither healthy nor useful to obsess about this, it’s more unwise to pretend that resuming a business-as-usual approach is the solution. It’s not. We’ve all experienced suffering and grief in some fashion during this time. This should help us to understand that, while our individual experiences may be quite different, we share the common thread of universal disruption, discontinuity, loss of control, increased ambiguity, and extreme uncertainty.
No wonder we feel off-kilter, afraid of returning to whatever seemed normal. That former normal was based on shared assumptions---some that actually reinforced power differentials and superiority that have since been called into question; many that have fallen under the scrutiny of racial reckoning and gender fluidity; and others that simply no longer fit in a world re-emerging from an abyss and re-evaluating its social norms.
It's a time for us, all of us, to re-think how we want to BE WITH EACH OTHER, making changes that make a positive difference in the lives of all of us. I’m looking to surround myself with people who want to be gentler, kinder, more generous, more forgiving, supportive, helpful, inclusive, and respectful. Clearly, I’m working on being that kind of person myself.
Organizations take on the persona of the people who work there. Tyrannical leaders who oppress and abuse their employees stifle rather than liberate positive energy to achieve great things. The future is in cooperation, collaboration, and communication to collectively discover and create as yet unimagined wonders.
# BrenéBrown #ScottSonenshein #powerwithleadership #organizationalchange #authenticleadership #transformationalleadership #FrederickDouglass