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4.5 | Identify some streams of power in your organization? How can power be used in your organization as a source for good? Post insights.
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Not currently in an organization but these reflections on streams of power are helpful. The work we did in our last weekend and in the weeks leading up to it in our small group helped me shift to a body wisdom practice around personal power which has felt radical and liberating. This shift was supported by our work together. I felt an internal liberation in being able to respond from a self referencing place in the moment rather than reacting to traditional power streams.
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I work in a large matrixed organization. Power can be used to empower others and to ensure that those who are newer/lower level have voices heard when larger decisions are made.
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Longevity- there is power that comes from people who have been in the org or the movement for a long time- they tend to have more knowledge about our field and the players in it
Relational- there is power in having proximity to others in power. For example, since I work with senior leaders and donors then I have access to news, ideas etc that others in the org don’t have access to.
External vs internal: The folks influencing our organization externally (donors, celebrities, politicians, board etc) have a lot of power within our organization and sometimes that causes friction with the internal power structure.
The goal of our organization is to make change so we need to harness the power of internal and external players to make change in our world.
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I was in a leadership position at my previous job, and now work as a project-leader with 7-8 leaders in a board above me, so the position has very little power except the name leader in the title (and a very ineffective and confusing chain of command). There are many hidden agendas that are left unspoken, especially around budgets, and around dominance to assert power over the project, often by focusing on giving orders to me as the project leader.
The organizations have a self image of doing good, as they are focused on helping people/ human services in community public health. If the project succeeds it will lead to new innovative services for youth that otherwise have few good treatment options.
I am not sure how to channel the power for good, as much of this material is in the “shadow” part of the psyche, and hence unacceptable to look at for the people involved. Based on my “sittings” in this course I now believe the best option is to focus on my own self regulation and clarity of perception, combined with compassion for these leaders, and hopefully by persistence and lack of reactiveness achieve the project goals.
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I was unfortunately unable to attend our final Wisdom Circle gathering. Much appreciation for this group and its insights and care over the course of this training.
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[apologies, I entered the prior response into the wrong discussion board]
I work in an organization where the mechanisms of power (particularly decision-making power) are currently being clarified. There is a really beautiful effort going on to be more clear around how decisions have been made in the past, to identify pain points in the process, and to clarify what decisions can be made at different levels of the organization, rather than continually feeding all decisions up to SLT. I see this greater transparency and accountability as power-related 1. in the restructuring of streams of power, and 2. in the trust and collaboration required to engage in such conversations and restructuring. In this, both senior leadership and the broader staff become more engaged and powerful.
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Similar to a couple of the other questions in this section, this question is slightly unfair for me to answer. My spouse and I own and operate a boutique executive coaching practice and corporate leadership consultancy. We’ve built this business for a number of reasons, one of which is to insulate ourselves from precisely these types of power streams that tend to occur in corporate settings, particularly the ones we experienced first hand. Many organizations profess to be meritocracies, and they are not. Many organizations pronounce upon emphasizing the best and brightest ideas irrespective of who they come from, and do nothing similar. I could go on. Certainly not all companies or not all teams in all companies operate in this fashion. But many do, and that’s why we built a professional engagement in the likeliness of the streams of power we value most: real, applicable knowledge, expertise, direct experience and gained wisdom; energy and vigor; heart and meaning; high impact communications; empathy, candor, integrity and kindness.
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This one really stumped me. I lead a non-profit in the public mental health sector – we are 350 people supporting 2,000 plus participants in the context of supportive housing and other treatment and healing focused programs. Our government funders have power, our other payors have power, our private donors have power, our board has power, I have power as the CEO, our senior management team has power within the organizational hierarchy, our mission and values hold power as a guide and North Star for our work, individual supervisors have power over their supervises, the people we support have power to choose and direct the nature of their supports, individuals with long histories within the organization and webs of relationships have power. All of these sources of power can be used as a source for good when they remain true to our mission and values. I feel that we are living in a time when there is a lot of attention put on a particular kind of power – as in the power at the top – when power can be so multifaceted, complex, illusory, situational, subjective.
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