To Be Sustainable Organizations Must Balance Empathy and Power – Karl Long
[Slideshow Link for Email/Other Subscribers]
Karl brought up an interesting subject which you can see from the slideshow above, and from his (and his readers’) thoughts in the link above. After posting this to an online Innovation & Design forum we belong to, here are some quotes from fellow list members:
- – -
Greg noted:
I participated in a workshop last summer at the Shambhala Institute Summer Program called “Solving Tough Problems in Practice: The Language of Power and the Language of Love
It was hosted by Adam Kahane and friends. We drilled into this issue of the requirement for organizational leaders to carry both love (empathy) and power to engage effective leadership. Kahane is currently writing a book on the subject, and here is an excerpt from his recent paper on the subject:
“… the words power and love are defined by so many different people in so many different ways. For many people they connote, respectively, oppression and romance. But I am using two particular and unusual definitions, from theologian Paul Tillich, that in my experience explain a lot of the dynamics of social change. Tillich said power is “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.” So power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow. And he said love is “the drive towards the unity of the separated.” So love in this sense is the drive to re-connect that which is whole, which is one, but which appears fragmented.Power and love are two orthogonal axes that together delineate the space of social change. If we want to be able to understand and address tough social challenges, then we need to be able to recognize and work with both of these vectors or poles.”
Another source of Kahane’s inspiration is from a speech by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change … And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites – polar opposites – so that love is identified with the resignation of power, and power with the denial of love. Now we’ve got to get this thing right. What [we need to realize is] that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic … It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.”
The insight for change makers is that to be effective, our approach to complex problems must be tempered by both assertive action (power) and empathetic listening (love).
- – -
Marc Rettig of Fit Associates, and known as @mrettig on Twitter noted:
Greg’s quotes from Kahane and King were both appropriate and powerful. Thanks for those. I would like to add one other observation, first called to my attention by David Whyte in his wonderful book, “The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America.”
It’s this: I find it is relatively rare to encounter *individuals* whose normal way of being is skewed toward the coercive/oppressive expression of power. Even in companies that are outwardly perceived as being um, soulless. The imbalance of “drive to express one’s purpose” with “drive to reconnect the whole” is an emergent characteristic of
the typical corporate culture, in which people perceive that it isn’t safe to express the “love” side of themselves, where people hide their demons and never talk about them, where people feel leashed to someone else’s dream. Organizations are full of people who feel constrained by imaginary boundaries, frustrated by the disconnect between their work and Who They Really Are.
The original question had to do with the idea that an empathetic approach and a power-based approach to transformation are often at odds. Bridging from Greg’s quotes, I’ve decided I believe that is a false dichotomy. Working for change puts us face-to-face with the challenge of making it safe for people to reconnect with their own impulses toward empathy, and to express them in their work as a group. (What a relief for everyone involved!) This is one reason why I’ve found the “Theory U” material to be so helpful–it provides one example of a “how to” guide for exactly that transformation,
prerequisite to any other transformation in the organization or its offerings. (And, as an aside, for the same reason I’m excited that Lauralee Alben is writing and speaking about her Sea Change Design model. See albendesign.com for bits and pieces.)
- – -
What do YOU think?