How do you define politics? The quick answer is “power.” Merriam Webster defines it as “competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership.” People who use political relationships in the workplace often wield power that is either disproportionate to their position or enhances their power beyond the position they hold. But where does this power come from? How is it that some people can exert tremendous influence, while others can’t even lay claim to the power that comes with their title? Is political power always exploitative, or can it be moral and constructive?

At its core, political power comes from the ability to understand what other people fear or desire, and to use that understanding to influence their behavior. The possibility of this power being misused is obvious even without the cautionary tales of corporate fraud and corruption that have plagued the news over past decades. Yet some of the most morally powerful leaders in recent history had a very strong grasp of this power and used it widely.

The Dalai Lama, for example, wields tremendous political influence. As the deposed leader of an occupied country, he has very little positional power, but because of his reputation as a compassionate, humble, and moral spiritual leader, he often speaks on the world stage to influence international political policy. He advises heads of state and is the spiritual leader of millions. The Dalai Lama uses his deep understanding of the struggles of humanity to foster compassion and moral responsibility on a global level. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. used their understanding of the human condition and our fears and desires to motivate people to make tremendous sacrifices, and advanced the moral and political development of their nations.

So how do we differentiate between using political power for good or ill? I propose that there are three levels to political power: immoral, amoral, and moral (see “The Political Sphere”). The key factor in deciding which is in use is self-awareness.

• Amoral Political Power Unconsciously understanding and manipulating others with no awareness of your own motivating fears and desires.
• Immoral Political Power Consciously understanding and influencing others without examining and understanding your own motivations.
• Moral Political Power Consciously examining, understanding, and evaluating your own motivation, fears, and desires before using your understanding of others to influence them.

It may be hard to differentiate between the results of amoral and immoral use of political power; in both cases, wielders do not taking moral responsibility for their actions because they do not recognize their own motivation. The difference is that the immoral person consciously and knowingly manipulates others, and therefore carries greater moral responsibility for the results. Consider these examples:

A COO tries to amass power by keeping his peers and subordinates in the dark about client expectations and organizational processes. He prohibits managers from collaborating to solve problems, or even from having management status meetings. He does not support employee development or conduct performance reviews, and he criticizes managers in front of each other and their subordinates. Unconsciously unable to accept that success in others is not a personal threat, he tries to maintain an image of superiority while actively tearing down the reputations of other leaders and managers. He is unaware that his fear of being seen as incompetent is inhibiting organizational growth, causing high turnover in management and poor efficiency and morale. While these tactics may make him seem more competent in the short term, in the long run he is costing the company money through attrition and lost efficiency, and limiting the quality of customer service. This pattern of behavior is ultimately self-defeating.

A manager furthers her career by skillfully using the cultural language of her company to promote an appearance of strong leadership skills to her superiors, while actively removing more experienced and productive employees from her team. Recognizing her employees’ ambition for advancement, she uses flattery and favoritism to mine for personal information and gossip, using it as informational currency to bargain for other information or discredit those she perceives as a threat. She negates the experience and skills of her employees while covering up her own deficiencies. She does not recognize that her fear of incompetence is motivating her to either control or remove others who may recognize it. Consciously, her loyalty to leadership is strong, but she often changes alliances with peers and has no sense of obligation to her employees. While she has been able to maintain a close relationship with leadership, the attrition rate, reputation, and productivity of her team has suffered, and her superiors are beginning to ask questions.

A director is hired to manage a team that has had issues with productivity, efficiency, and morale. She takes time to get to know each of her employees personally, learning their strengths, weaknesses, and ambitions. She spends part of a day with each employee letting them “train” her on their jobs, so she can understand their day-to-day challenges. She quickly promotes experienced employees to line manager roles and publicly credits team members’ important successes. She forms cross-departmental alliances that benefit her team and improve the quality of work for the whole department. Her team becomes more efficient, happier and better at solving problems and working cooperatively with clients.

Were you able to recognize which story corresponded with which type of political power? The first person did not understand how fear and insecurity motivated him to sabotage his managers. While this is obviously a destructively shortsighted behavior, his total lack of awareness puts this example in the amoral political power category.

The second manager purposely sought out information and alliances that would allow her to promote her own reputation while actively damaging those of her employees. She clearly understands how cultivating personal relationships can be used to mine for valuable and potentially damaging information on others. However, she has not examined her own motivations, which stem from territorialism, competition, and fear or distrust of employees who might “show her up.” This makes her an immoral user of political power.

The final manager cultivated interdependent relationships with her employees and colleagues, taking extra steps to educate herself about the nature of the work, a necessary step in building credibility and trust. She used this trust to heal relationships between team members, establish clear expectations, and change their status in the organization. Since she is aware of her own ignorance of process as a new manager and fosters trust through transparency, she seems to be using her power in a moral fashion.

Cultivating Moral Power

So how do we cultivate moral political power? How do we influence others without corrupting our own values? The answer lies in self-awareness. Most people strive for self-awareness in some way. We may talk to our friends or a trusted counselor about our problems. We may take time for quiet reflection, prayer, or meditation.

These techniques are excellent ways to take a deeper look at our own motivations and evaluate our actions. Here is an exercise designed to help you recognize and evaluate your motivations and then make ethical choices in the workplace:

Ethical Awareness Exercises

Exercise 1 This exercise gives you a baseline, or mental checklist, against which to evaluate your motivations when making decisions at work.

At work I desire… (choose all that apply) public recognition, advancement, increased compensation respect, independence, collaboration, companionship, friendship, status, influence, control, stability, (add any additional items from your own experience)

At work I fear… (choose all that apply) losing my job, being seen as incompetent, not being liked, not being respected, being the last to know important news, the ambitions of others, the power of others, being deceived, getting caught, making a mistake, lack of control, instability, being shown up, competition (add any additional items from your own experience)

My most important values at work are…

Honesty, Integrity, Creativity, Trust, Success, Kindness, Respect, Loyalty (add any additional items from your own experience)

Choose your top two answers from each question and write them out.

The responses to the first two items describe areas in which you may unconsciously be influencing others, or ways that others might be influencing you. The last response describes your core working values.

Example:

At work I desire respect and stability.

At work I fear losing my job and getting caught making a mistake.

My most important values at work are honesty and respect.

Exercise 2 This exercise helps you recognize when you are not acting in accordance with your core working values. It also helps you identify alternative ways to approach situations that play on your desires or fears.

Think of a situation where any of your core fears and desires may have affected your behavior. Identify the motivating fears and/or desires, and then compare them to your core values. What was the positive and negative outcome of the described situation? (see example below)

Situation: I made a minor mistake on a team report, but convinced myself and my boss that it was the fault of a junior team member.

Fear: making mistakes

Desire: respect

Values in use: dishonesty and disrespect

Comparison: My fear of making mistakes and looking bad caused me to go against my core working values and use my senior status to blame someone else for my mistake.

Outcome: While I didn’t have to admit I’d made a mistake to my boss, I damaged the possibility of having a positive relationship with my junior coworker, and I provided him with an example of unethical behavior in senior employees.

Imagine a way you could have dealt with the situation without violating your core working values. What might have been the outcome?

Example: I could have admitted my mistake openly and given the junior team member public credit for his accurate work.

Outcome: I would have built personal credibility and trust through honesty and integrity. In addition, I would have set a positive example for the junior team member, possibly increasing his loyalty and creating the opportunity to provide mentorship.

These exercises can help you recognize when your behavior is values-driven and when you’re tempted to act based on fear or desire. Keep in mind that everyone acts unconsciously sometimes. Ethical growth is only possible when we can take an honest look at our behavior and learn from our mistakes.

The Price of Power

The power to influence others comes with a price; the responsibility to act ethically. Selfish use of political power is ultimately self-defeating, as it erodes trust, commitment, and loyalty in its victims. Ethical use of political power can motivate people to work together to accomplish goals that benefit everyone. Taking an honest look at your own motivations is a first step toward building and using political power constructively and ethically.

Michelann Quimby is CEO of DiaMind Consulting in Austin, Texas.

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In his new book, Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege and Success (Doubleday, 2003), Art Kleiner looks at the barriers to institutional change from a different angle, beginning with the reason why organizations exist in the first place. He contends that the primary purpose of organizations is not—as most of us believe—meeting customers’ needs, fostering innovation, or making a better world.

Rather, organizations are set up, first and foremost, to fulfill the perceived desires and priorities of a “core group” of people. As such, the success or failure of a company—and its ability to change—is determined by the behavior of this key set of individuals.

Organizations are set up, first and foremost, to fulfill the perceived desires and priorities of a “core group” of people.

Kleiner’s theory suggests that core groups exist in every organization, large or small, for-profit or not-for profit, private or public sector. Members of this elite set take their power not from their position in the hierarchy, but from the way they influence decisions at every level of the hierarchy. Every organization, at any given moment in time, has its own unique core group pattern; the most influential people might be high-profile shareholders, critical technology specialists, key suppliers, major customers, or members of the company’s founding family. Core groups often include “bottlenecks,” people who control or manage essential parts of operations, such as the graphic design and production staff of a publishing company, or the veteran school bus administrator of a local school system. In other words, the core group doesn’t necessarily comprise just people with hierarchical authority but those who are, for whatever reason, perceived as central to the enterprise by the people who work there.

Managing Organizational Complexity

According to the author, core groups are not inherently bad or good; they are simply part of the nature of organizational systems. Without them, it would be impossible for organizations to exist, simply because the complexity of most organizational environments would be too great to manage. Art says that, just as a baby instinctively recognizes human faces, most of us are instinctively attuned to the people who we have come to believe are important. Instead of making decisions based on the balance of customer and shareholder priorities, we say to ourselves, “I don’t want to be the one to walk into Cheryl’s office and say we can’t do that.” We let Cheryl, whom we probably know only slightly, represent the full range of factors affecting the decision we have to make.

For those who resist the idea of a core group, Kleiner asks us to examine our thinking when faced with a complex decision. Do we consider how it will sit with our boss, our boss’s boss, or someone else entirely? If so, then we’re basing our choices on the needs of the core group. The reason that the influence of these key people “trumps all other concerns,” the author explains, is “not because of some mystical resonance, but simply because of the cumulative effect of the decisions made throughout the organization. If people believe the core group needs and wants something to happen, they assume that making it happen is a part of their job.” As such, those who do make it happen often get rewarded and recognized, while those who act based on other criteria usually get left behind

Creating Great Core Groups

One of the reasons that Kleiner developed the core group theory was his awareness of the rapid proliferation of organizations in the world. If we are to be successful in a society of organizations, he says, we need a theory that allows us to clearly see how enterprises function. Companies in which core groups behave in self-serving and exploitative ways, such as Enron, are dismal places to work and often end in failure. Organizations in which decision-makers expand the core group by creating structures that take into account the welfare and development of everyone in the firm, such as Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation and Southwest Airlines, are typically high-performing work environments with deeply committed workforces. In other words, behind every great organization is a great core group.

The author contends that, by understanding the characteristics and principles of the core group in their organizations, people can act far more effectively than if they don’t have that knowledge. Employees can decide, for example, if they’re interested in building a career in the company even if they never get into the core group. People trying to change the business from within can increase their chances of achieving their goals by seeking sponsorship from core group members. And those at the top can consider how to galvanize spirit and productivity among employees by creating the conditions for the core group to expand to a larger group of people. When leaders guide core groups to work in the best interests of everyone in the organization, they can amplify the capabilities of their enterprise and create a legacy of which they can be proud.

Thus, in many ways, Who Really Matters offers a tool for evaluating how companies make decisions at the most fundamental level and for improving the way people work together to achieve notable outcomes. As with any hypothesis about how organizations work, as managers test the core group theory in their own settings, we will get a sense of its validity and whether we can use it over the long run to generate the kind of systemic change we need for our enterprises to survive in the world today.

The post Getting to the Core of How Organizations Work appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Organization must pay attention these transitions, because of the radical reduction in the numbers of workers currently available for jobs and the movement into our working ranks of a new generation of employees with totally different values and expectations. If companies want to attract and keep top talent, the old ways of recruiting, rewarding, and leading won’t get us there. A different kind of leadership is required for the future.

Traditional Leadership Models

What are the roots of the leadership models that brought us to this point in organizational development? During the Industrial Revolution, hierarchies were the norm. At that time, businesses depended on the completion of many repetitive tasks in the most efficient way possible. To that end, factories, railroads, mines, and other companies followed a top-down view of leadership, in which those at the top gathered the information, made the decisions, and controlled the power. Those at the bottom—the “hired hands”—were rewarded for conformity and unquestioning obedience. In addition, business moved much more slowly than it does today.

Our approach to preparing new leaders over the last 50 years has sprung from these roots. Leadership training in MBA courses has been based on the case-study method, through which learners study patterns of how others solved their business problems. The assumption has been that if you learn enough about the successful case studies, you will be prepared as a leader—you will be able to go forth, match your new challenges to the case studies of the past, and superimpose a similar solution on the problems of today.

Yet change is accelerating, and we are now in a time when many companies view a traditional education as more of a negative than a positive. They even consider an MBA a detriment, because graduates must unlearn their reliance on the past in order to see new, more complex patterns emerging. Some observers have said that this shift has turned the pyramid of power on its head.

The Beginnings of Servant-Leadership

Servant-leadership is one model that can help turn traditional notions of leadership and organizational structure upside-down. Robert K. Greenleaf came up with the term “servant-leadership” after reading The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse (reissued by The Robert K. Greenleaf Center, 1991). In this story, Leo, a cheerful, nurturing servant, supports a group of travelers on a long and difficult journey. His sustaining spirit helps keep the group’s purpose clear and morale high until, one day, Leo disappears. Soon after, the travelers disperse. Years later, the storyteller comes upon a spiritual order and discovers that Leo is actually the group’s highly respected titular head. Yet by serving the travelers rather than trying to lead them, he had helped ensure their survival and bolstered their sense of shared commitment. This story gave Greenleaf insight into a new way to perceive leadership.

Greenleaf was reading this book because he was helping university leaders deal with the student unrest of the 1970s, a challenge unlike any they had faced before. In the spirit of trying to understand the roots of the conflict, Greenleaf put himself in the students’ shoes and began to study what interested them. It was from this reflection that the term “servant-leadership” first came to him. To Greenleaf, the phrase represented a transformation in the meaning of leadership.

Servant-leadership stands in sharp contrast to the typical American definition of the leader as a stand-alone hero, usually white and male. As a result of this false picture of what defines a leader, we celebrate and reward the wrong things. In movies, for example, we all love to see the “good guys” take on the “bad guys” and win. The blockbuster “Lethal Weapon” movies are a take-off on this myth and represent a metaphor for many of our organizations. Our movie “heroes” (or leaders) act quickly and decisively, blowing up buildings and wrecking cars and planes in highdrama chases.

Although they always win (annihilating or capturing the bad guys), they leave behind a trail of blood and destruction.

This appetite for high-drama can fool us into believing that we can depend on one or two “super people” to solve our organizational crises. Even in impressive corporate turnarounds, we tend to look for the hero who single-handedly “saved the day.” We long for a “savior” to fix the messes that we all have had a part in creating. But this myth causes us to lose sight of all those in the background who provided valuable support to the single hero.

Seeing the leader as servant, however, puts the emphasis on very different qualities (see “A New Kind of Leadership” on p. 3). Servant-leadership is not about a personal quest for power, prestige, or material rewards. Instead, from this perspective, leadership begins with a true motivation to serve others. Rather than controlling or wielding power, the servant-leader works to build a solid foundation of shared goals by (1) listening deeply to understand the needs and concerns of others; (2) working thoughtfully to help build a creative consensus; and (3) honoring the paradox of polarized parties and working to create “third right answers” that rise above the compromise of “we/they” negotiations. The focus of servant-leadership is on sharing information, building a common vision, self-management, high levels of interdependence, learning from mistakes, encouraging creative input from every team member, and questioning present assumptions and mental models.

How Servant-Leadership Serves Organizations

Servant-leadership is a powerful methodology for organizational learning because it offers new ways to capitalize on the knowledge and wisdom of all employees, not just those “at the top.” Through this different form of leadership, big-picture information and business strategies are shared broadly throughout the company. By understanding basic assumptions and background information on issues or decisions, everyone can add something of value to the discussion because everyone possesses the basic tools needed to make meaningful contributions. Such tools and information are traditionally reserved for upper management, but sharing them brings deeper meaning to each job and empowers each person to participate more in effective decision-making and creative problem-solving. Individuals thus grow from being mere hired hands into having fully engaged minds and hearts.

Our movie “heroes” (or leaders) act quickly and decisively, blowing up buildings and wrecking cars and planes in high-drama chases. Although they always win (annihilating or capturing the bad guys), they leave behind a trail of blood and destruction.

This approach constitutes true empowerment, which significantly increases job satisfaction and engages far more brain power from each employee. It also eliminates the “that’s not my job” syndrome, as each person, seeing the impact he or she has on the whole, becomes eager to do whatever it takes to achieve the collective vision. Servant-leadership therefore challenges some basic terms in our management vocabulary; expressions such as “subordinates,” “my people,” “staff (versus “line”), “overhead” (referring to people), “direct reports,” “manpower” all become less accurate or useful. Even phrases such as “driving decision-making down into the ranks” betray a deep misunderstanding of the concept of empowerment. Do we believe that those below are resistant to change or less intelligent than others? Why must we drive or push decisions down? Something vital is missing from this way of thinking—deep respect and mentoring, a desire to lift others to their fullest potential, and the humility to understand that the work of one person can rarely match that of an aligned team.

Phil Jackson, former coach of the world champion Chicago Bulls basketball team, described this notion well in his book Sacred Hoops (Hyperion, 1995). He wrote, “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the ‘me’ for the ‘we.’As [retired professional basketball player] Bill Cartwright puts it: ‘A great basketball team will have trust. I’ve seen teams in this league where the players won’t pass to a guy because they don’t think he is going to catch the ball. But a great basketball team will throw the ball to everyone. If a guy drops it or bobbles it out of bounds, the next time they’ll throw it to him again. And because of their confidence in him, he will have confidence. That’s how you grow.’” Phil Jackson drew much of the inspiration for his style of coaching—which is clearly servant-leadership—from Zen, Christianity, and the Native American tradition. He created a sacred space for the team to gather, bond, process, and learn from mistakes.

A servant-leader is also keenly aware of a much wider circle of stakeholders than just those internal to the organization. Ray Anderson, chairman and CEO of Interface, one of the largest international commercial carpet wholesalers, has challenged his company to join him in leading what he calls the “second Industrial Revolution.” He defines this new paradigm as one that finds sustainable ways to do business that respect the finiteness of natural resources. His vision, supported by his valued employees, is to never again sell a square yard of carpet. Instead, they seek to lease carpeting and then find ways to achieve 100-percent recycling.

A NEW KIND OF LEADERSHIP

A servant-leader thus does not duck behind the letter of the law but asks, “What is the right thing for us to do to best serve all stakeholders?” He or she defines profit beyond financial gain to include meaningful work, environmental responsibility, and quality of life for all involved. To quote Robert Greenleaf, “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will each benefit, or at least not be further deprived?”

Supervisors often believe that they don’t have time to make a longterm investment in people (see “Addiction to Fire-fighting”). When an individual’s primary focus is on doing everything faster, she becomes addicted to the constant rush of adrenaline. To feed this craving, the person neglects proactive tasks such as coaching, mentoring, planning ahead, and quiet reflection to learn from mistakes. Instead, the brain sees only more problems—reasons to stay reactive and highly charged. Servant-leaders spend far less time in crisis management or fire fighting than do traditional managers. Instead, they use crises as opportunities to coach others and collectively learn from mistakes.

ADDICTION OF FIRE-FIGHTING

As the number of organizational “fires” increases, leaders spend more and more time “fire-fighting,” which, in the short-term, reduces the number of crises (B1). However, the fundamental solution is to build decision-making skills in others (B2). By focusing on crisis management rather than on staff development, supervisors increase the company’s dependence on their own expertise and actually erode the level of competency throughout the organization (R3).

The Power of Internal Motivation and Paradox

So what does it take to become a servant-leader? The most important quality is a deep, internal drive to contribute to a collective result or vision. Very often a servant-leader purposely refuses to accept the perks of the position and takes a relatively low salary because another shared goal may have more value. For example, Southwest Airlines chairman Herb Kelleher has long been referred to as the most underpaid CEO in the industry. Herb was the first to work without pay when SWA faced a serious financial threat. In asking the pilot’s union to agree to freeze their wages for five years, he showed his commitment by freezing his own wages as well.

Big salaries and attractive perks are clearly not the main motivators for Southwest’s leadership team; the company’s top leaders are paid well below the industry average. Rather, they stay because they are making history together. Their vision is a noble one—to provide meaningful careers to their employees and the freedom to fly to many Americans who otherwise could not afford the convenience of air travel. SWA’s leaders love to take on major competitors and win. Beyond that, each finds fulfillment in developing talent all around him or her. Servant-leadership has become a core way of being within Southwest Airlines.

A second quality of servant-leaders is an awareness of paradox. Paradox involves two aspects: the understanding that there is usually another side to every story, and the fact that most situations contain an opposite and balancing truth (see “The Structure of Paradox: Managing Interdependent Opposites,” by Philip Ramsey, The Systems ThinkerV8N9). Here are some of the paradoxes that servant-leadership illuminates:

• We can lead more effectively by serving others.
• We can arrive at better answers by learning to ask deeper questions and by involving more people in the process.
• We can build strength and unity by valuing differences.
• We can improve quality by making mistakes, as long as we also create a safe environment in which we can learn from experience.
• Fewer words (such as a brief story or metaphor) can provide greater understanding than a long speech. A servant-leader knows to delve into what is not being said or what is being overlooked, especially when solutions come too quickly or with too easy a consensus.

A Time for Transformation

We are moving away from a time when a strong hierarchy worked for our organizations. In the past, we gauged results in a far more limited way than we do today—financial and other material gain, power, and prestige were viewed as true measures of success. Other, more complex measures, such as the impact of our businesses on society, families, and the environment, have not been part of our accounting systems. Yet now, as we move into the Information Age and a new millennium, we’ve come to recognize the limitations of the traditional “bottom line.”

In the past, we gauged results in a far more limited way than we do today . . .Yet now, as we move into the Information Age and a new millennium, we’ve come to recognize the limitations of the traditional “bottom line.”

A servant-leadership approach can help us overcome these limitations and accomplish a true and lasting transformation within our organizations (see “Practicing Servant-Leadership”). To be sure, as we envision the many peaks and valleys before us in undertaking this journey, we sometimes may feel that we are alone. But we are not alone—many others are headed in the same direction. For instance, in Fortune magazine’s recent listing of the 100 best companies to work for in America, three of the top four follow the principles of servant-leadership: Synovus Financial (number 1), TDIndustries (number 2), and Southwest Airlines (number 4). In addition to providing a nurturing and inspiring work environment, each of these businesses is recognized as a leader in its industry.

On a personal level, as many of us begin to come to terms with our own mortality, our desire to leave a legacy grows. “What can I contribute that will continue long after I am gone?” Some yearn to have their names emblazoned on a building or some other form of ego recognition. Servant-leaders find fulfillment in the deeper joy of lifting others to new levels of possibility, an outcome that goes far beyond what one person could accomplish alone. The magical synergy that results when egos are put aside, vision is shared, and a true learning organization takes root is something that brings incredible joy, satisfaction, and results to the participants and their organizations. For, as Margaret Mead put it, “Never doubt the power of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The true heroes of the new millennium will be servant-leaders, quietly working out of the spotlight to transform our world.

Ann McGee-Cooper, Ed. D., is founder of Ann McGeeCooper & Associates, a team of futurists who specialize in creative solutions and the politics of change. For the past 25 years, she and her team have worked to develop servant-leaders. Duane Trammell, M. Ed., is managing partner of Ann McGee-Cooper & Associates and co-author of the group’s servant-leadership curriculum.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Kellie Warman O’Reilly and Janice Molloy.

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A few years ago, I had some dental surgery. The day afterward, I was getting onto an airplane and I banged my head against the overhead compartment, which sent a terrible shooting pain into my jaw. I went back to the dentist’s office and complained to the nurse that when I hit my fist against my head, it really hurt. She looked at me calmly and gave me the most sensible advice I have ever been given: “If it hurts,” she said, “then stop doing it.”

Our usual way of trying to solve tough problems hurts, and we should stop doing it.

An Unusual Approach

For the past 15 years, I have been working on an unusual way to solve tough problems. I got started on this journey quite unexpectedly. In the early 1990s, I was working in the strategic planning department of Royal Dutch Shell, the global oil company, in London. One day we received a phone call from a group of left-wing activists in South Africa who wanted to use the Shell strategic planning methodology to make plans for their country’s transition away from apartheid, and they wondered whether someone from Shell could come and give them methodological advice. I found myself facilitating a team of South African leaders—black and white; from the left and the right; from the opposition and the establishment; from politics, business, and civil society—who were talking through what was happening and what they would do about it. What I witnessed in South Africa is that it is possible for a highly diverse group of leaders from across a social system, even ones who have literally been at war with one another, to engage in co-creating a better future.

Since then, I have, with my colleagues, been following this thread I picked up in South Africa. Our basic approach has been to work with teams of leaders from across a given social system, all of whom have the commitment and capacity to act to change that system, to build up a shared understanding of their current reality, of their own role in that current reality, and of what they can and will do to co-create a new reality. We have worked in this way with all kinds of teams, on all sorts of complex challenges, in all parts of the world: in Guatemala, to implement the peace accords; in India, to reduce child malnutrition; in the United States, to rejuvenate both urban and rural areas; in Canada, to shift to a low-carbon economy; across Europe and the Americas, to make food systems more sustainable and in South Africa, to respond to social impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Becoming “Bilingual”

I have bumped my head many times. But if you focus on one question for long enough, then eventually an answer will start to come to you. Here is the beginning of the answer that has come to me: If we want to be able to solve our toughest problems peacefully, then we have to become bilingual. We have to learn to speak two languages that are not translatable one into the other. We have to learn to speak the language of power and the language of love.

Now this answer requires a bit of explanation because the words power and love are defined by many different people in many different ways. I am using two particular definitions suggested by a German-American theologian named Paul Tillich that I have found resonate deeply with my own experience.

Tillich defines power as “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.” So power in this sense is the drive to get one’s job done, to achieve one’s purpose, to grow. I have spent most of my career in the world of business, which is dominated by this language of power: by the energetic, entrepreneurial drive of individuals and organizations to get their job done, to achieve their purpose, to grow. And when 15 years ago I got involved in that first project in South Africa, what so impressed me about South Africans was their entrepreneurial energy to do the job, to achieve the purpose, to grow into what their time was demanding of them.

Tillich defines love as “the drive towards the unity of the separated.” So love in this sense is the drive to reconnect that which is whole, which is one, but that appears broken into fragments. I witnessed this drive toward unity, away from apartheid, in South Africa; after all, the word apartheid in Afrikaans means separateness. And I witnessed this same drive in all the work I have done in Latin America—in Colombia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Guatemala— working with teams of leaders who are trying to come together to heal the wounds caused by decades of polarization, repression, and war.

Longing for Connection

I recently had an experience where I witnessed a crystal-clear expression of the phenomena of power and love. I was in a workshop of a project that brings together leaders from all parts of the deeply and dangerously divided Jewish-Israeli society—left and right; religious and secular; politicians, businesspeople, rabbis, and activists—to try to develop answers to the vital question: What kind of society can we envisage, to which we and our descendents would be proud to belong, and in which we could live in friendship with our non-Jewish neighbors?

On the one hand, Jewish-Israeli society exemplifies the phenomenon of power: the drive of a people, rising out of the near-extinction of the Holocaust, to realize themselves intensively and extensively—and the conflicts that that drive inevitably produces. And this same phenomenon was present within the workshop itself, with each of the participants seized by the drive to realize themselves, to be true to themselves, to argue their point of view passionately—and the tough arguments that that drive inevitably produces.

Power and love each have two faces: a generative face and a degenerative, shadow face.

But there was a second phenomenon also present in that workshop. One morning we had a long, heartfelt dialogue about inclusion and exclusion within Israeli society. It seemed to me that every part of that society feels excluded: the religious, the secular, the settlers, the Arabs, the Russians, the Ethiopians. I could hear the pain in people’s voices, but I couldn’t make out why this conversation was so important to the group. Then suddenly I saw what wasn’t there. It’s like the joke about Sherlock Holmes and Watson on a camping trip. In the middle of the night, Holmes wakes Watson up and asks him: “Watson, what do you see?” Watson is used to these tests of his skills of observation, and he starts to answer, “I see the twinkling stars, I see the rising moon, I see the passing clouds,” but Holmes interrupts him and says, “No Watson, you idiot! Someone stole our tent!” The pain in the room was the pain of the longing for what wasn’t there: for a sense of inclusion, of connection, of oneness. This is the phenomenon of love: the drive toward the unity of the separated. The pain in the room was the longing of Jewish-Israelis to be united with one another, and also with their non-Jewish neighbors.

Generative and Degenerative

Up to this point I have been talking about power and love in neutral and straightforward terms. But of course our situation is not neutral or straightforward at all, and this is because power and love each have two faces: a generative face and a degenerative, shadow face. Italian feminist Paula Melchiori has pointed out to me that we can see these two sets of two faces clearly if we look at traditional gender roles. The father, exemplifying masculine power, goes out to work in the world, to do his job. The generative face of his power is that he can create something valuable in the world; he can create history. The degenerative face of his power is that he can become so focused on his work that he forgets about his connection to other people, and can become a robot or even a tyrant. By contrast, the mother, exemplifying feminine love, stays at home to raise the children, renouncing her capacity to create history. The generative face of her love is that she literally gives life to her child. The degenerative face of her love is that she can become so focused on the child that she stunts its capacity to grow and to realize itself.

So the reason we need to be bilingual is that power and love are complementary. Love is what makes power generative instead of degenerative. And power is what makes love generative instead of degenerative.

Paul Tillich’s most famous student was the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In a speech King gave six months before he was assassinated, he spoke directly about this fundamental complementarity. “Power without love,” he said, “is reckless and abusive. And love without power is sentimental and anemic. This collision of immoral power with powerless morality constitutes the major crisis of our time.”

My own experience bears out King’s analysis. Power without love is reckless and abusive. If I act to realize myself without recognizing that you and I are one, then the result I will produce will at best be insensitive, and at worst oppressive or even genocidal. And love without power is sentimental and anemic. If I recognize our oneness, but don’t change my actions to accord with this recognition, then the result I will produce will at best be useless, and at worst a disingenuous reinforcement of the status quo.

It is not easy to work with power and love together. They are not opposed to one another but nor are they the same; they are permanently in tension. Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson said: “Probably the most troublesome pair of opposites [that we can try] to reconcile is love and power. Our modern world is torn to shreds by this dichotomy and one finds many more failures than successes in the attempt to reconcile them.”

Two Brains

A French-Canadian friend of mine once told me that his experience of being bilingual—which literally means having two tongues—was actually of being bicephal—of having two brains.

I had always understood his statement as metaphorical, until I came across a remarkable book by a neuroanatomist named Jill Bolte Taylor. Ten years ago, Taylor had a stroke where she completely lost the functioning of the left hemisphere of her brain. For three weeks she had the experience of functioning with only her right hemisphere.

Here is what she reports: “The two hemispheres … process information differently; each hemisphere thinks about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say, they have very different personalities. [The left hemisphere is] that little voice that says to me, ‘I am. I am.’ And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me ‘I am,’ I become separate.” So in my language, the left hemisphere is the brain of self-realization, of power.

Taylor goes on to report: “[The right hemisphere says:] ‘We are energy beings connected to one another… as one human family… We are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.’” So in my language, the right hemisphere is the brain of wholeness, of love.

We need to learn to be bicephal, to be bilingual. We need to learn to speak both the language of power and the language of love. Power and love are not the same, but nor are they opposed to one another. Like our masculine and feminine natures, like our left and right hemispheres, they exist in different domains; they complement and complete each other. If we can become more bilingual, then we will become more able to solve our toughest problems peacefully.

Adam Kahane (kahane@reospartners.com) is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An OpenWay of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities. As a partner in Generon Reos LLC (www.reospartners.com), he is a designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can come together to solve their toughest problems. During the early 1990s, Adam was head of social, political, economic, and technological scenarios for Royal Dutch/Shell in London.

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