​As a father of two young children and an advocate for and with young people for much of my career, I want to make an impassioned request: stop associating bad behavior by adults with the actions of a child or adolescent.

The petulant child analogy, the “adult daycare” image, or any of the other references to adolescence that try to capture the limited emotional intelligence of the current resident of the White House fundamentally misunderstand and muddle both what it means to be a child and what it means to be an adult. The petulant adult is a different beast from the developing child and we need to treat him as such.

For starters, my child’s daycare while full of petulant children, including my own, is a place of love and growth and inspiration. It’s a place of unbounded learning and development, not unbounded dysfunction, conniving, and malice.

In a typically developing child, mistakes, conflicts, and even random tantrums come from naiveté, exploration of boundaries, and the reality of yet-to-be-developed parts of their brains that drive things like executive decision making and management of emotions. I struggle with these things every day as a parent, but I recognize that my kids’ lack of logic and decision-making is normal, natural, and why they need consistent, loving parents and other caring adults around them. At the end of the day, they are doing their job developing and I just have to keep doing mine in guiding, loving, and supporting them unconditionally.

We should never confuse this process and generally healthy dynamic with what we see happening in our White House, in our country, our boardrooms, or anywhere else. We should never associate genuinely childlike behavior like tantrums or grabbing someone else’s toy with the actions of adults who persistently lash out irrationally, don’t understand basic relational norms and constructs foundational to a society, and who use their position and power to manipulate and disempower others. In adults, this is not naiveté; it’s perversion. It’s not exploration; it’s intention. It’s not about their limited brain development; it’s about the rest of us accepting and normalizing bad behavior because of someone’s money or position or race. None of this is child-like. It is sick.

At the root of the illness is privilege, which not only has the ability to arrest basic social development in the child of privilege but also can persist to embolden and empower that lack of development as a source of ignorant, coercive, bully power in adulthood. The other privileged of us not directly impacted by their malevolence only feed and strengthen it through direct support or inaction.

I don’t know what to do at this point except try to do the little things every day to keep finding a place to move my next foot forward.

So, today, let’s take some power back, take a step forward, and reclaim our language not only in fairness to our children but also to clarify the real issues we are facing.

Donald Trump is not a petulant child in an adult daycare. He’s a sick adult. It’s different.

​We all know the story about change: it’s the only constant, it’s happening faster than ever, if we don’t like it then we will like being obsolete even less.
 
It’s all true. But, most of us and most of our companies haven’t really internalized the implications. If any of these thoughts on change are to be meaningful, we best change the way we approach this not-so-new world order, not merely acknowledge that it exists. We have to change ourselves.
 
I was working with a company recently who as part of their work operates call centers to provide direct support to their customers. As we talked about growth and change in their company more broadly, we explored if and how they were, or could be, learning from these front-line employees. What were they hearing directly from customers that the company really needed to understand?
 
We’ve all heard the saying about the importance of having “our ear to the ground” so we can sense imminent changes in our work environments and markets. Who has their ears to the ground more than those meeting our customers where they are? Dealing with their problems? Frustrations?
 
Too many of our people on the front-lines of our work think they are too “low on the totem pole” to speak up in our organizations or don’t have the power to create change in their own work. As a result, many of our organizations are really missing the opportunity to become more resilient, adaptable, and creative organizations. When we don’t listen to our customers and the employees who interface directly with them, we run the risk of missing indicators of emergent change in our markets, products, and even broader society that can lead our products and companies toward their next iteration.
 
Through our discussion, this company realized that their listening to front-line employees was spottier than they would like - that the value of listening to employees was more ad hoc and leader-by-leader than a consistent, strategic value of the firm. The implications from this kind of organizational self-awareness are pretty vast.
 
How do we as an organization demonstrate listening as a value? How do we train our people and set management expectations? How do we hire and promote our people to support such a strategic value? How do we intentionally recognize good listening as good leadership? How do we openly celebrate the knowledge that our people at all levels are stepping up and sharing with us?
 
People at all levels of our companies need formal and informal outlets to provide feedback, ask questions, and share ideas for solutions. This is just strategically smart. It’s not merely about being nice to our employees. Not only will listening to our employees make our company more resilient and adaptive, it will also make for happier employees and better products and services. When they know their ideas and insights are respected (even if not always acted upon), our people will more actively identify customer patterns and frequent issues that we may never see, and solve them in ways we may never have thought of. They will own their work.
 
So, instilling a culture of listening that is supported by training, accountability, and processes up and down our organization is paramount to leading emergent change –the change we otherwise may not see coming. 



image: http://www.yourthoughtpartner.com/blog/bid/73770/the-8-steps-to-active-listening

Days like this, weeks like this, waking up and living in a world that does this: there is a part of me not very deep down that just wants to crawl in a hole. Hide away with my family. Protect them. Love them. Protect our love from a hateful world. I am still fighting through this instinct.
 
And, at the same time, I have been reading and writing and thinking about power and love and society. This love that I instinctively want to hide away and protect, this love I want my children to feel, this safe, isolated love – it will not help. It is powerless. Anemic. It is part of our problem. It is a defense, a denial. It separates us, and is a sign of weakness and selfishness.
 
My alternate instinct is to release the rage and frustration I feel about our culture’s unwillingness to think of, consider, act, and legislate with a mind toward the other, rather than just our own needs and the needs of people like us. Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s having children, but I feel we as a country are more self-centered than ever before. We are citizens of an economy driven by the belief that our self-interest is what matters. We are competing with each other for scarce resources. If we get ours, somehow it will trickle down, out, or up to be the best for the collective. We will have done our part. That’s what capitalism has taught us, right? But, surely we are more than cogs in an economic system – more than economic citizens.
 
What about all of this flag hullabaloo? There’s a broad war of social values and ideals being waged but in the narrowest possible way because we no longer know ourselves as part of a society. We talk about Democracy and try to build it with an economy, not by practicing democracy and building it with a society.
 
I see it in curt interactions among neighbors on the sidewalk all the way up to the person in the White House. We want what we want. And, if you don’t want it, then fuck you. You’re wrong. I’ll get mine, and don’t try to stop me.
 
Our social bonds and identities have become so weak that we see codified rights and laws as the guidelines for society rather than the safety net that will allow all of us in a society to thrive and provide the opportunity for us to be our best selves. The law defines the basest form of ourselves that a society can tolerate and remain in tact. We believe we have a right, therefore we must. It’s not prevented by law, therefore, we should. If our neighborhoods and communities feel weak, this is why. It’s because they are. The social bonds have given way to economic and legal ones.
 
I am starting to rage.
 
So, now I am back at love, but not the love I want to hide away and protect. I need to find a love that has power. Efficacy. Purpose. A love that is generative and potent.
 
How do we empower love rather than protect it? How do we cultivate empathy that builds a society? How do we teach and learn that the needs and feelings and perspectives of others matter even as I have a right to my own? How do we teach our children that sacrificing of one’s own self is not weakness, it is strength? That the other is part of us? How do we teach and learn that love is power and the ultimate power is love?
 
We are missing something, people. We are missing basic human connection. We are missing decency and personal sacrifice. We have sold our souls to ourselves. We are consumers of our own propaganda, and we’ve lost contact with each other and with something more powerful.
 
I have not written myself into any answer or sense of clarity here. I am lost.
 
So, I will just come back to the words I wrote in reaction to a previous gun tragedy in Dallas, hoping I could empower, rather than protect, love so that others might also:
 
 
Dear People,
 
I love you.
 
I love you because today I feel lost and powerless and I need to love you. I love you because I need love this morning and it’s the only light I can see.
 
I love you because whoever you are and wherever you are and whatever you look like, you have within you the power to help heal this world, to help heal me or the other person next door crying through his morning coffee, holding his kids a little longer and tighter, attempting to drive to work through bleary eyes.
 
I love you because people I don’t know and cannot tell are hurting and need someone to love them.
 
I love you for the implicit value of love to our common humanity, to the common life force among us. Only love allows us to share this humanity and not hold it within, isolated, alone. Love connects us, opens us to each other.
 
I love you for your implicit value.
 
I love you because only love can create the world I want to live in, to raise my daughters in.
 
All I hear in my head this morning repeating over and over again are Dr. King’s words: “Darkness cannot drown out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drown out hate; only love can do that.”
 
In the spirit and hope of sharing some tiny light this morning to drown out darkness, spreading love to drown out hate: I love you.
 
Anderson

​Change isn’t what it used to be, neither are our organizations nor the environments in which we work and compete.
 
Change is no longer a discreet organizational development concept: what are the structures, policies, and practices that need changing (mostly from the top) to accomplish our business goals?
 
Change is emergent: how do we systematically identify the needs, gather the insights, and prepare and empower our people at all levels to make it happen? Emergent change and our ability to respond to it must be cultivated as part of our cultures, core to the people we recruit and hire, intrinsic to how we develop and support our existing people, and strategically aligned with our business model.
 
Despite this reality, it seems that most of the “best-selling” approaches for leading or managing change make the concept seem formulaic and finite rather than dynamic and perpetual. They make it seem organizational rather than relational. Even as many of these models readily identify change as the only constant in our contemporary business environment, they often present solutions as if it were time bound and discreet.
 
One of the most popular is the Kotter Change Model, which defines an 8-step process for leading successful change: 1. Create a sense of urgency. 2. Build a powerful coalition. 3. Create a vision for change. 4. Communicate the vision. 5. Empower action by removing barriers. 6. Generate short-term wins. 7. Build on the change. 8. Make it stick.
 
I don’t actually disagree with any of this and totally understand how such a list makes a powerful product for those who are struggling to lead change. I wonder, however, if those struggling the most to lead change aren’t often the ones who need a deeper understanding of it. Yes, in most cases, you will need to take Kotter’s steps to achieve the change you want, but is that all it takes? I don’t think so.
 
You know what will kill your change process before you ever take that first step? 1. A lack of trust in leadership. 2. Poor relationships with and among our people. 3. Ineffective communication from the highest level of values and vision down to day-to-day operations.
 
Let’s consider some basic questions:
 

• Can a leader who isn’t trusted by his people create a shared sense of urgency with them?
• Can a leader with poor relationship skills or who doesn’t prioritize relationships build powerful coalitions?
• Can a leader who doesn’t communicate effectively generate buy-in for a sustainable vision of change?

 
I think for most of us the answer is at least “not likely” for all of these – which undermines the first four steps in the 8-step change process!
 
So, while I appreciate the concise steps for change provided by Kotter’s model and others that are equally consumable, they mostly represent the tactical investments that live on the tail end of any real change process. They ignore foundational concepts of readiness. If I might adapt the old adage: “Change is 90% preparation, 10% perspiration.”
 
The 8-steps are mostly the perspiration.
 
As leaders, we have to be mindful every day and in every interaction of what kind of organization we are building. We have to understand our power to engage and influence our people, to share power with them, and to prepare them to help lead and navigate change with us. We must work daily to generate energy and ownership of our vision, strategies, and work with others.
 
As leaders, we have to be willing to do the immeasurable and un-measureable work of building trust, modeling strong relationships, and investing in culture. If we do this work, we, and our organizations, will be ready for change as it comes. It will just be part of how we do business.
 
 
 
 

Power is at the core of your organizational culture whether or not you accept or even recognize it. In fact, if you don’t accept or recognize it, it’s likely that you are the one benefiting from it. You’re “in power.”
 
Regardless of whether you do or not, I promise that others see it, and they see you through it.
 
So, the question is: are you the facilitator of a powerful culture or are you progenitor of a culture of power? Understanding the difference and how your people interpret your culture, and your position as a leader in it, will determine the nature and effectiveness (or not) of your leadership over the long term.
 
Here are a few distinctions that might help clarify:
 
A powerful culture believes in its people.
A culture of power believes in the system, structure, and organization.
 
A powerful culture grows power.
A culture of power consolidates and organizes it.
 
A powerful culture believes that knowledge and ideas are everywhere in your organization.
A culture of power believes that knowledge and ideas come from the top.
 
A powerful culture celebrates people at all levels.
A culture of power celebrates a select few.
 
A powerful culture focuses on relationships, responsibility, and accountability.
A culture of power focuses on accountability.
 
A powerful culture seeks transparency.
A culture of power keeps secrets.
 
A powerful culture communicates.
A culture of power distributes information.
 
In a powerful culture, our people feel a sense of ownership for their work.
In a culture of power, work feels directive and even compulsory.
 
In a powerful culture, there is joy.
In a culture of power, there is fear.
 
In a powerful culture, everyone feels responsible for leading and following.
In a culture of power, there are a few leaders and many followers.
 
In a powerful culture, everyone teaches and learns.
In a culture of power, some are teachers and others are learners.
 
In a powerful culture, leadership is emergent.
In a culture of power, leadership is constructed.
 
In a powerful culture, change is both bottom-up and top-down.
In a culture of power, change is top-down.
 
In a powerful culture, people naturally create.
In a culture of power, people wait for others “above them” to create.
 
In a powerful culture, people are proactive.
In a culture of power, people are reactive.
 
In a powerful culture, people seek truth.
In a culture of power, people seek affirmation.
 
 

Image: http://www.hci.org/blog/how-encourage-innovation-and-mitigate-risk-start-organizational-culture

I love this question, and I believe starting with it can open a world of possibility around addressing the most pressing issues, big and small, personal and public, work and life that we face each day. Here are some thoughts on how to release its implicit power:
 
HOW                                                                                          
Assume possibility. If we genuinely and openly explore “how,” we have the opportunity to both better understand the problem we are facing and to open the door to new solutions. We have to start from a place of faith and confidence in possibility. In turn, solution thinking done well also asks us to think critically about the rules and norms of the problem, the structure. We must analyze and understand better how we arrived at the present to deepen our understanding of how we might address it, not just incrementally, but substantively in the future.
 
Focus on strategy. To identify “how” substantively, we need to think strategically. When we try to solve problems by starting with what we should “do” then we miss the opportunity to transform the condition that generated the problem in the first place. We end up doing stuff that just gets us to the next iteration of the same problem. Strategy focuses on systems and structures and relationships that we must invest in in order to implement our transformative “how” more consistently, sustainably, and transformationally.
 
Align tactics. Clearly, at some point, we must “do” something. We just shouldn’t start there because our tactics are often rooted in the skills and perspectives and practices we are most familiar with, the ways we already “do.” It doesn’t take a big leap of logic to see that those ways aren’t going to be sufficient for transforming our problem. In fact, they may be part of it. While our existing skills, perspectives, and practices may be reinvested in or reorganized for incremental improvements, to transform conditions our tactics have to be rethought and reconsidered to align directly with our strategies. We need to “do” things differently, and to make that happen we will probably also need some new skills, perspectives, and practices in the mix.
 
MIGHT                                                                                                                                                                                           
Question creatively. Genuine belief in possibility begs us to be more creative. Creativity that can support the vastness of possibility starts with a willingness to question everything. This questioning isn’t about throwing out everything and starting over. In fact, it allows us the opportunity to identify and strengthen the core beliefs, the foundations upon which our work and relationships are built, the things we can’t and won’t change. At the same time, deep, creative questioning does allow us to identify ancillary assumptions about “how we do things” that, in fact, are just a matter of bad habit, culture, or climate issues. They might even live only at the small group or even individual levels of our organization or work but deeply impact our ability to accomplish our goals.
 
Generate lots of solutions: Similar to our urgent need to “do” something, when we start generating solutions, we often have an urgent need to get to the “right” one as quickly as possible. Getting to the right answer, however, usually requires some combination of multiple creative answers. So, we need to generate a lot of possible answers, and some that even seem impossible, before we start whittling things down. The pressure of generating a volume of ideas (in the next five minutes brainstorm some ideas vs. in the next five minutes come up with 20 ideas) forces us to move our thinking beyond our normal parameters. We force ourselves to come up with outlandish ideas – which may just hold the nugget of wisdom that triggers the ultimate solution. It also just generally gets us out of our cognitive lane and frees our thinking.
 
Iterate. As we start to focus our creative ideas and narrow them down, we need to stay aware of when and how we start to get wedded to them and start building assumptions around them. As we feel that human need to get to the answer, we can inadvertently make the jump to what we believe it is and derail the creative process. We must remain open and flexible and continue to iterate on ideas rather than just carry them forward. In other words, we have to keep learning. Have we uncovered some new truth that changes our assumptions? Have we identified alternative strategies and tactics and are we staying open to those as they come? What are their implications on our previous strategies or tactics? Basically, we have to remain committed to creatively questioning throughout the process.
 
WE                                                                                                                                                                                                  
Engage diverse voices and ideas. To support the generation of lots of solutions, we should also engage diverse voices and perspectives. Generating a lot of the same kind of ideas from the same perspectives doesn’t get us anywhere. But, when we stop and engage stakeholders, and even non-stakeholders, in the ideation process, we generate more raw material to work with, and often material we never thought about, blinded by our own perspectives.
 
Develop shared purpose. Even though it is the last word in the question, solving for “how might we” starts with the idea of “we.” It’s the subject. It’s collective. We work with and through others. To solve the problems we need to solve and create the future we want to create, we must share a sense of purpose of what we are trying to accomplish. None of the other parts of this process will work fluidly if our purposes are not aligned. The process of creating is hard enough without facing the constant and unnamable stress and frustration of inadvertently working at cross-purposes. This is perhaps the most critical investment a leader can make.
 
Share responsibility and accountability. When we are trying to transform our work and/or the world, we must not just share purpose but ownership. “We” works at all levels of our creative process and related attempts at implementing new strategies and tactics. So, we must be intentional over time as we continue to ideate, iterate, and implement any change efforts, so that a sense of the collective remains. We will divvy up specific responsibilities, different people deploy different tactics, but we should continue to share accountability for achieving our strategy, driving toward our shared purpose throughout the creative process.
 
 
Image: https://beingenpointe.com/2011/09/

​If ever there was a case to be made for being in the moment and being more present, even on a Monday, this week’s solar eclipse was it.
 
For weeks, it was all over the news. Everyone was talking about it. People were flocking to Nashville. Hotels and bars were packed. It all seemed like another super-hyped special event for a city that loves its own super-hyped special events. More noise in a noisy world. I was kind of over it before it ever happened. It was still Monday.
 
But then, just before noon central time the eclipse began. To see a small bite being taken out of the sun was surreal. It sparked wonder of what our ancestors must have thought. It challenged me to locate myself in a galaxy, not just a city or country or even planet. All I wanted to do was watch and absorb. Shrink.
 
But, as the moon covered more and more of the sun over the next hour and a half or so, we battled overcast skies, worried we were going to miss this magnificent moment we had been sold for so many weeks. As the time got nearer, the clouds got heavier. Oh, our misfortune! Oh well.
 
Totality was moments away. We would miss it. Carry on. It’s Monday.
 
And, then the clouds broke. There it was. The glowing ring around the complete blackness of the moon. A void with fiery red flashes along the right side. It was nighttime around us. An orange sunset spanned all horizons. The crickets began chirping. The birds went to sleep. There were bats flying around.
 
All of nature was out of sorts – or, were we all actually in perfect sorts? Present with it.
 
My reaction and excitement completely surprised me. I was giddy. Oh my! Holy cow! That is unbelievable! Look at that! Goose bumps. Watery eyes. I encouraged my daughters (3 and 5) to try and take it in. This breathtaking moment; mathematically predictable and yet profoundly spiritual. I felt powerfully tiny and humbly expansive.
 
And then, a piercing white light emerged. Seductive. The “diamond ring.” It was so small and specific. For that brief moment, it felt like a spot light, a beam being sent directly to me. Individual. As it grew, we were all flooded by white light like none of us had ever known. The intense contrast of stage lighting. The hyper-reality of it made us all aware of each other, engulfing us in wonder, looking, observing.
 
Inexplicable waves of shadows washed under our feet.
 
Euphoria.
 
And, then it was over.
 
It was one minute and fifty-five seconds of totality (official time).
 
One minute and fifty-five seconds on a Monday of observing light.
 
One minute and fifty-five seconds on a Monday of watching nature.
 
One minute and fifty-five seconds on a Monday of trying to locate myself in the cosmos.
 
One minute and fifty-five seconds on a Monday of deeply shared experience with others.
 
One minute and fifty-five seconds on a Monday of complete presence.
 

​Most of us don’t live our day-to-day lives on the moral horizon. Most of us don’t consider the morals at play in our daily lives and decisions any more than we require directions to put on our clothes, or a map to get to work. The horizon only shows itself when there’s something that disrupts its inevitability, stalls its inertia, and questions its reliability in our lives. We get pushed there.
 
So, what happens to us when we find ourselves on a moral horizon?
 
We aren’t used to such clarity. We are shocked by our own deep sense of certainty.
 
We aren’t sure how we even arrived at having to take note of the horizon. We are stunned that its absoluteness could possibly be challenged.
 
We can’t comprehend what our world even means if this horizon doesn’t exist as we know it. The implications are too vast to process.
 
A horizon that feels so clear inside of us, but somehow comes into question by others in our society, triggers the vertigo of the person afraid of heights standing high upon a precipice (I know this well). Our heads are awash with uncertainty about our world, the odd perspective of seeing it more broadly, from above – driven in a self-reinforcing loop by the confusion and concern of why there is even uncertainty in the first place. The ground is firm beneath me. There is no question. I will die if I fall from here, breach the horizon. If I jump, I won’t fly. I know this. Why am I even thinking about it? There is no question. The moral line is clear. My position is established. And yet, this debilitating vertigo.
 
I want to snap out of it.
I want to buck-up in righteousness, and yet I huddle in disillusionment.
I want to be bigger than the moment, and yet feel swallowed by it.
I want to reclaim the comfort and clarity of a moral horizon that I never even have to pay attention to, the specificity of the position on the precipice, and yet it all seems dangerous and blurry.
 
I also realize that my vertigo is in part a result of my privilege, which only adds to the weight and the disorientation of the whole thing. I know others are forced to face moral horizons every day because of their race, gender identity, or otherwise.
 
I don’t have a happy ending here. I’m still standing at this horizon, head spinning, heart aching, writing to try and just make it a little clearer. Writing in hopes that I might talk myself into the clarity of the right next step. Writing to assure myself that the moral horizon does exist and to recognize and do my part such that no one has to live every day at its edge.

​
Image: http://guff.com/these-pictures-are-not-for-people-with-a-fear-of-heights

​I have been writing and thinking a lot about power lately. And, one of the principles of power that has surfaced is the idea that we are often most powerful when we feel most powerless.
 
I explored this premise based on my own and my family’s experiences with my Dad’s suicide. It was the most broken, disorienting, unstable feeling time of my life. As I have written before, I don’t even remember a lot of what happened for a good year around that time. Yet, mostly thanks to my Mom and fully supported by my immediate family, we took the opportunity to tell our story, and to tell my Dad’s story.
 
We shared publicly that his death was suicide, that he suffered with Depression, that he had experienced sexual abuse by a neighbor when he was a child. We thought we were being transparent for our own purposes and healing. It turned out that our transparency was of a far greater purpose and broader healing.
 
We received literally hundreds of personal notes and letters (they continue occasionally over a decade later) of people sharing their own stories of suicide, Depression, and abuse. Some of these people were friends we had known for years but never knew shared these same experiences. Others were total strangers who had simply read the obituary and wanted to share their gratitude and their own story with people they knew would understand.
 
It was incredibly powerful. We were powerful. My Dad’s life remained powerful, and even took on new power after his death.
 
I share all of this again as I observe the Mayor of Nashville, Megan Barry, who recently lost her only son to an overdose, as she turns this most powerless feeling moment in her life into perhaps her most powerful. In fact, Mayor Barry’s being open and honest about her loss, her son’s struggle with addiction, and the frustrating and futile need and desire of a parent just to ask her son “what were you thinking” could be the most important work she has ever done.
 
I know there are parents all over the country, and even the world, who have already read her story, listened to her words, and feel just a little more whole because of it. I know there are parents right now who will lose their child in this sort of tragedy, who have yet to realize how important the Mayor’s example will be to them.
 
So, I guess this is in part at thank you to Mayor Barry, but also a note of encouragement to everyone else who feels alone, shamed about, or broken by their lives and the tragedies they have experienced. You are not alone.
 
The more we can all muster the courage to share our struggles openly the more lives we can save, the more families we can heal, and the stronger communities we will build.
 
We can and will be powerful in our most broken moments. 

In an era that has surfaced the gender, race, and economic biases implicit in our cultural definitions of powerful leadership, we have also exposed the self-serving and self-reinforcing nature of that powerful leadership. We can see how our examples and modifiers of powerful leadership have served the powerful and institutionalized powerlessness elsewhere.
 
Further, in our current climate of one upmanship, brashness, bravado, and the loudest-is-the-leader, we may have actually reached the logical conclusion of our old cultural notions of powerful leadership.
 
So, I would like to offer a different lens through which we can better see and understand and cultivate our power, as well as the power of those around us: Leaderful Powership.
 
I am nothing if not a language and grammar nerd, so understanding the concept starts there.
 
The idea of Leaderful Powership simply inverts the traditional and accepted concept of powerful leadership to make power the subject and leader the modifier.
 
Power is a condition of human existence (not the privilege of a select few). “Ship” as a suffix denotes that condition. Powership. We all have it, whether we know it, apply it, or leave it wholly untapped.
 
Being leaderful, then, is a modifier of our human condition of power. “Ful” as a suffix means to be “full of” or “characterized by.” To apply “–ful” to power in a description of the human condition (i.e. powerful) is redundant, or at least not very insightful. Again, we are all powerful.
 
So, applying “-ful” instead toward how we use that power (leaderful) could provide some clarity and insight to how we live and work with each other, leading, following, and the like.
 
How do we become leaderful, given that we already have power?
 
Perhaps in simply reorienting subject and modifier, core condition and qualifier, we can also reorient how we invest in our personal development and our abilities to support others’ development. Perhaps we can use our own power to help others grow theirs, leaderfully.
 
These basic reflections were the spark that ultimately led to my book: We Power: Building Powerful Relationships That Can Change Your Work and the World.
 
Check it out to see where the thinking led!