And then there’s Power

Photograph of crackling electricity around a disc shape on a bronze-colored column.So, what about leadership and power?

I was thinking about this question after last week’s article “Why lead?”

Some people confuse leading with having power. And yes, leaders have power, but that’s not what’s important for true leadership. Those who go into leadership for the power it confers upon them aren’t leaders, in my view; instead, they’re likely to be toxic petty despots.

Or, as Ryan Derousseau, author and journalist, once said,

Leadership is a tool, not a value, and effective leaders can be abhorrent forces in the world. I try to remind myself never to say admiringly that someone is a great leader. Instead I try to be more specific. Not all great leaders are leaders for good.

Not all great leaders are leaders for good. All too true, right?

So if you want to lead, think about your values. What’s personally important to you – and what’s professionally important? As I asked in that “Why lead?” article, why do you want to lead?

Or, to shift the emphasis slightly, why do you want to lead?

(Those are slightly different questions; try answering both.)

I had a delightful conversation with one of the readers who emailed me about that article. To protect their privacy, since I don’t have permission to say more, I’ll just say that it was a perfect example of real leadership values: supporting and growing the people on their team, supporting and growing the organization, all the way up to supporting and growing their industry as a whole. And, far from incidentally, because all of that makes life better for everyone involved.

Why? Because it mattered to them, and not because of the inherent power that comes with leadership.

Yes, a leadership role includes power. And if you want to lead, think about how you’ll use the power that leadership – the tools of leadership – confer upon you.


What does power mean to you? What does leadership mean? Are you thinking about what it means to be the kind of leader you’d like to follow?  Here’s my contact form. Let’s talk.