The author and motivational speaker, Simon Sinek, used this exact definition of power and applied it to leadership in his book, Leaders Eat Last. I've really enjoyed reading a couple of Sinek's books in the past, even if I don't necessarily agree with everything he says (which is perfectly okay). I have even posted about some of his leadership lessons in the past (see "Reflections on leadership", "Leaders eat last", "Attitude > Talent", "Do the Cleveland Browns have a trust issue?", and "Oh Lord it's hard to be humble" for my personal favorites). "Power" as it relates to leadership has been the subject of a number of articles in the Harvard Business Review, and for good reason. As early as the late 1950's, social psychologists claimed that there were several different kinds of power (e.g. "expert power" and "reward power", among others). Simply put, "power" is necessary for "leadership."
Let's get back to Sinek's claim. He was telling a story about how a change in leadership turned one of the worst performing nuclear-powered attack submarines, the USS Santa Fe, into the top performing submarines in the U.S. Fleet (if you are interested, retired U.S. Navy Captain David Marquet explained how he did it in a great book, "Turn the Ship Around"). Prior to Captain Marquet, the reenlistment rate on the USS Sante Fe was well below the average for the rest of the Navy (only three members of the crew reenlisted the year before Captain Marquet took over - by the time Captain Marquet finished his tour as the Commanding Officer (CO), thirty-three sailors signed up for another tour of duty, far above the Navy's average). Similarly, on average, about two or three officers on a submarine will ultimately go on to become CO's. During Captain Marquet's tenure, nine out of his fourteen officers eventually became submarine CO's. As Sinek writes, "The Sante Fe didn't just make progress, it made leaders."
Sinek uses a lightbulb as a metaphor, "We measure the power of a lightbulb in watts. The higher the wattage, the more electricity is transferred into light and heat and the more powerful the bulb. Organizations and their leaders operate exactly the same way. The more energy is transferred from the top of the organization to those who are actually doing the job, those who know more about what's going on on a daily basis, the more powerful the organization and the more powerful the leader."
What's that sound like to you? If you've been following my posts, I write a lot about high reliability organizations (HROs). These are organizations that succeed in avoiding catastrophes in environments where accidents are expected to normally occur due to a number of risk factors and complexity. You may recall that one of the five defining characteristics of HROs is something called "deference to expertise". HROs recognize that the experts - the individuals who are on the front lines and closest to the action - are generally in the best position to be able to make critical, split-second decisions. HROs yield decisionmaking authority, as much as possible, to the experts. They transfer this "energy" (the authority to act) to those who have the most up-to-date information and real-time situation awareness.
I will end this post with a couple of relevant quotes. Leadership expert John Maxwell said, "Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others." He also said, "Leadership is the power of one harnessing the power of many." Finally, Mary Parker Follet (the so-called "Mother of Modern Management") said, "Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power but by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those led. The essential work of leaders is to create more leaders." It sounds like both Maxwell and Follet would agree with Sinek's definition of power.
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