Strength vs Power; Strength and Power; Strength or Power

A group of senior managers was discussing an opening for a new supervisory position. The managers went around the table, assessing employees and their suitability for promotion.

Each candidate had advantages: this one had a strong relationship with the division director; another possessed critical technical expertise; this one’s performance shone during a recent project; another stood out for communications skills.

One employee’s name brought universal praise. “Oh, ‘Sandra’ is terrific!” “Such a team player!” “She is so strong!” “She is the linchpin! I can’t imagine taking on any new project without her!”

After the accolades, the managers moved on to other candidates, without any serious discussion about promoting their “linchpin.”

That omission seemed to be a disconnect to me, so I raised the question: Why not Sandra?

The managers were surprised, and a little sheepish. They described Sandra as the foundation of their efforts; someone who never refused additional tasks or late hours. She cheerfully mentored less-experienced coworkers, often without being asked.

I asked again: Why not Sandra?

The managers kinda shrugged. They just never saw her as management material. "She's always so pleasant and unassuming," one said. "Never high-maintenance; never asks anything for herself."

"She's a real worker bee," another person concluded.

I have to acknowledge a degree of hypersensitivity about the concept of “strong women.” I’ve been hearing about “strong black women” all of my life. I consider myself to be a strong black woman. However, my adult observations of strong women left me somewhat ambivalent. Strong women take care of business and everyone around them. People celebrate their strength and turn to them for help.

But all too often, strong women neglect themselves. They live on the feeling of being needed without ever showing enough self-love to demand the appreciation they deserve.

Strength is the ability to withstand. A strong person can take on more and more weight and still keep going. But there is a limit. Eventually, even the strongest person will break if they are pushed too far beyond their limit.

And the “strong” label can produce an unsettling side effect: Admirers of strong people may see that strength as permission to keep piling on, never questioning if their continued requests for help turn into exploitation. They reinforce the unequal relationship with their gratitude for each assist, and another declaration of admiration for strength.

People talk a lot about “strong” leaders. What I think they really want is a "powerful" leader.

By “powerful,” I don’t mean someone who moves through the world with an unspoken threat of force and the willingness to use it against enemies. I define power as the ability to influence other people, to collaborate and gain knowledge from the perspectives of others, and then lead people to a common purpose or goal.

Strength, in its ability to withstand, is static. Power is dynamic. Strength develops from within. Power radiates out. And you can’t have power without first developing strength.

Some people fear power because of all the historic examples of its abuse. Yet, you rarely hear someone disparage the quality of strength.

By my assessment, the senior managers were overlooking a powerful leader in Sandra. I don’t discount their instincts: there was something about Sandra’s personal presentation that caused them to "hold her small;" that made them see her more as a subordinate than a leader. Perhaps one of them could mentor her about the culture of management in their organization so that she could better “look” like a manager.

By all accounts, Sandra has the goods. Maybe senior management will be willing to use its power to help her become the supervisor it wants.

Change up

What is difficult for me about sitting with the process of change?

At the halfway point, 2008 clearly is a year of major change and transition. I write this as the US stock markets resemble a theme park ride. The American political landscape is shifting drastically around us. Gas, housing and grocery prices change so fast that folks are being forced to recalculate their budget decisions on a weekly basis.

Personally, my life has been in transition for years; the kind of transitions that smack you upside the head. The deaths of loved ones; illness; sudden professional moves; family shifts. Obviously, all of our lives are in constant transition; it’s just the more jarring ones that get our notice. You can't avoid awareness of the major transitions (even if you wish you could).

But whether it’s transition writ large or transition writ small, there still is a process and an awareness required to move forward with intention and purpose. There are ways to move with transition, instead of feeling helpless about the changes that are happening to you.

I was working out with my trainer (which, by the way, is a powerful way to manage change and the stress it can bring). He is consistent in his preference to use a variety of methods to achieve basic goals. The specific exercises may vary, but the goals are the same: to built core strength through the abdominal muscles and to build flexibility and strength in the upper and lower muscles of the body. He alternates pushing motions with pulling motions – when to exert strength and when to resist -- with varied amounts of weight.

To balance the effort demanded from various muscle groups, my trainer had me shift free weights from one hand to the other while repeating a motion with another muscle group. Type A personality that I am, I worked to maintain the correct form while striving to quickly master a speedy transfer of weight from one side to the other. That is where he stopped me.

“Take your time,” he said. “You have to slow down to recognize the speed of the transition in front of you. Think of it like the exchange of a baton: the lead off runner has to assess the speed required for the next transition in order to achieve a smooth hand off. You can’t stay at the same speed and shift successfully.”

I think I’m like a lot of people who buy into the idea of seamless change. We like the idea of moving effortlessly from one phase to another without the need for introspection or evaluation. No room for learning. And why should it be necessary? Aren’t we often tasked to take on multiple changes, transitions or crises at the same time? Who has time to slow down when everything is being dumped on you at once?

Yet, here I am at the opposite end of that continuum. Everything has seemed to slow down, and I haven’t a clue of what coming at me. The anticipation is excruciating. How can I prepare if I don’t have a clue of what’s ahead?

And yet, maybe that’s precisely the learning. None of us really knows what’s ahead. What we do know for sure is that change is constant, and that it’s always around the bend. So maybe the best any of us can do is strengthen our core, work on our flexibility and try to measure the speed of the transition in front of us. That way, when we can see the approaching change more clearly, we’ll have the flexibility and strength we need to move in the direction we need to go.