I feel moved to write about power. It is “in the field” at the moment. If we are honest, it always is but often we don’t want to admit it. There is always a power dynamic in a group — any group — and it doesn’t have to be a ‘bad’ thing (though sadly it often can be — as recent world events have painfully highlighted). Power results from all kinds of factors including position, gender, race, access to information, sexuality and many, many others. How much of it we have often shapes how much awareness we have about how much of it we have. I have been thinking about this a lot in the last few days, reflecting on my own power and privilege as a white woman, as a coach, as someone who was raised in a single parent family but who was lucky enough to have access to a very privileged education…and, and, and….
So I ask: How conscious are you of the power you hold and what is your relationship to that power? How do you choose to use it? And, perhaps most importantly, when do you choose to relinquish it and in service of what?
This is not a piece about race. It is a piece about leadership, power and consciousness. In a coaching session with a client this week, we were probing this question of power and exploring what it takes to step away from it in service of our purpose. There is an inner movement that is needed if we are to make this shift; a letting go; a subjugation of ego; a softening of sorts. It is deeply personal work that requires vulnerability and honesty. It is easy to fall into shame or defensiveness, or indeed denial. It takes courage to acknowledge it and humility to confront it.
In my view this is all part of the process of “right sizing” ourselves in our leadership roles; about taking responsibility for being neither too big nor too small for what is required in that moment, taking on neither too much nor too little. The coaching conversation in question felt pertinent to what is happening in the world at the moment. It felt important. And while the conversation was focussed on someone else, I came away reflecting on this for myself.
May we all be doing something similar at this time.