The Power of We

An inspirational quote that I read recently reflected that if we do things alone, we can get to a destination faster, but if we do things together, we can go much farther. As individual people, when we get clear on our vision, and act on that vision, we are powerful. Yet, when we join with others, share our visions, and support each other in the journey, our power grows exponentially. I call this exponential power, "the power of we."

When I was in graduate school, I remember learning that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And as I worked in the beginning of the organizational transformation movement, I learned that organizations are actually organisms. This lens brings a wonderful consciousness to the founding and development of groups and the projects they undertake. If a group is understood to be a living organism, and each member of a group is a unique, crucial and creative part of the whole, great and unexpected outcomes can emerge and grow.

When two people join together on a common goal, there are actually three entities they need to attend to: each individual "I" and the collective "we." The needs and goals of each individual "I" are important to define and attend to. Recognizing that an oversoul, the "we" also exists, which might have needs and goals that are related to or different from the individuals' needs allows for the care of the relationship as well as the individuals who comprise it.

If I am founding a new group, I try to identify some common elements that create common ground for potential members. For example, in the new Women In Music Gathering that I am co-founding with Colette O'Connor and Cindy D'Adamo, all our members are women musicians, deeply called to and committed to the personal and creative process of making music. Musicians do so much in isolation that building a community of fellow musicians offers nourishment,support and inspiration. By sharing stories of our personal journeys, we find empathetic listeners and common ground. We do not feel as alone. And special projects can emerge for us to co-create together.

At our first meeting, as we introduced ourselves to the group, articulated what inspired us as musicians, described our journey, and looked at our current projects and vision, we found common ground, found listeners who really understood what we were saying, and recognized that our hearts were touched and great energy was generated as each and every member of our group spoke and shared. This kind of soulful communication invites an organic bonding. And the organic bonding invites collaboration and support for the things that matter most to each and all of us. It could lead to new shared projects, as well as nuts and bolts support for current individual projects. We bond over our common ground.

The dynamics are similar even in different groups and different projects. The recent Cabaret Evening for the Newton Festival of the Arts brought together 8 singers and an accompanist to perform in a 21 song, 90 minute revue. Our goals were to have fun, express ourselves, and provide joy and entertainment to our audience. We each prepared our individual songs and a handful of duets. As the producer, I organized the songs into an order for the performance, balancing tempos, styles, genres, male and female singers, solos and duets....And when showtime came, I can feel the power of the team delivering the show. Each and every singer sang at a high level. We passed the microphone baton from one singer to the next, as though we were in a musical relay event. The show evoked many emotional qualities, including laughter and moments that touched the heart. There was a wonderful collaborative energy. It was clear we all had different pieces to complete one another's jigsaw puzzles. And by the end of the show, we felt like a connected team, each celebrating one another's performance, and celebrating together what we co-created.

The creative process that can unfold when a group of people get together with conscious awareness of the power of we is inspiring, and when carefully tended, can lead to endless and fruitful possibilities and successes.

The Inner Skills of Leadership

"I've looked at some training programs for leaders. I'm discouraged by how they often focus on the development of skills to manipulate the external world rather than the skills necessary to go inward and make the inner journey."

--Parker Palmer

Leaders, by definition both assume positions of power and impact other people through their use of power. Two key questions are: 1. how do we define power? and 2. how does a leader use their power?

A familiar image of power is the "power over kind," where power is a currency granted to those at the top of a hierarchy, those with the greatest material resources or those who by virtue of being appointed take on positions of power. This kind of power involves manipulating the external environment, including the people who are part of it. In this model of leadership there are "power haves"and "power have nots." Power must be granted to the "power have not" by the "power haves." This model can feel highly empowered and sometimes omnipotent for those on top, and highly disempowering and sometimes impotent for those on the bottom.

Another image of power, one that may be less familiar in common circles, is a "power with" model. In this model, the "leader" may be in the front of a project or effort, but does not operate from a "power haves" and "power have nots" model. In this model, the leader does not wish to control or have power over. S/he seeks to cultivate the natural power that lives inside each of the people s/he works with. To the degree the leader develops his/her own inner resources, and develops an internally grounded sense of power, the leader holds a space with other people that encourages, models and may even inspire, internally grounded power in others. Parker Palmer notes that leaders in our society often rise to power by "operating very competently and effectively in the external world, sometimes at the cost of inner awareness." These people tend toward extroversion, which may include "a tendency to ignore what is going on inside themselves." The externally oriented model is focused more on doing and producing tangible results in a concrete way, than on being and the process by which results are produced, including the impact on the people involved in the process. Worked long and sometimes inhuman hours, overlooking our basic human needs, including the need to eat when the body is hungry, to take breaks to walk around and decompress, to go to the bathroom in a timely manner are common when we focus on the externally driven model of leadership and success. There is often a high personal price paid to succeed under these conditions and a high internal price paid to work for the leader who models and demands this kind of work environment. Some of the inner skills of leadership that need to be cultivated include: * Meditation and reflection, to develop and maintain a spiritual connection with self and the larger world * Learning to listen to and heed the signals of one's own body, including when to eat, when to focus, when to relax and when to go to the bathroom * Learning what ones own natural skills and gifts are and what skills are best sought from other people * A sense of internal power through knowing who one is, rather than seeking external power that can be granted or taken away by others * A sense of groundedness: emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually, that leads to "good decisions" in a wholistic sense. Good results are generated through a fair and healthy process for self and others. * An inner sense of timing. This includes a sense of right pace (for self and others), when to stop and when to proceed. * Using intuition as a sense of guidance in addition to facts and other concrete information. Integrating facts and intuition usually produces a more complete picture for decision making If a leader models the above skills, s/he will inspire others to do the same. And both our organizations and our world will reflect more fairness, equity and ultimately, sustainability.