Living a more Powerful Life - Your Guide

Life Leadership Power Exercise

(First published in 2001 as a SIM RLF Leadership Nugget, updated for November 12th ABTP's Business Technology Networking Group - 4pm, Las Colinas Country Club)

Unless you live without Olympic coverage for over a decade, you know the Michael Phelps story. According too many experts and bolstered by his amazing record Olympic success of 8 Gold medals in Beijing 2008, Phelps was literally made for swimming. Likewise, Nastia Liukin and Shawna Johnson, friends and teammates, who achieved Gold in the team competition and Gold and Silver in the individual gymnastics events, though different in style, have achieved top honors and will be remembered for their prowess. Thousands of little girls and boys around the world have new role models due to their successes and no doubt will find their own motivation to drive themselves to do wonderful things.

Like you and I in our quest to lead ourselves, our teams and our families, and as breathtaking as these athletic heroes are as individuals and as awe inspiring are their accomplishments, none of us got here alone, nor are our efforts self-sustaining. They, like us, have belly buttons. Dr. Carl Hammerschlag, author of “Theft of the Spirit; A Journey to Spiritual Healing,” and weekly Schlagbytes, both highly recommended, likes to say they we were given a belly button to remind us that we were once connected to someone else. In numerous interviews the elite athletes above have thanked their parents, coaches and peers for various relational realities that allow them to sustain their peek fitness and achieve world class results. None of us is a success by ourselves. Every success has dozens of others behind it who may never be recognized, and yet were vital to our “gold medal” successes. Beautiful!

I have found through personal experience that alignment with one’s purpose, one’s mission and kernel of power, and the enrollment of individuals, groups and entities that give us power one can make a sustainable difference in the world and in one’s results.

In 2001, I was introduced to George Peabody, an educator and lecturer on the subject of power. His lecture changed my perspective on power and has been a major rock of my leadership practice ever sense. According to George one must recognize that power and strengths are different. Strengths are talents you possess all by yourself. Power comes from aligning your strengths with those of other people and enrolling these collective strengths to get results. The following exercise is one you can do for yourself, your family and all those you lead. I recommend that you consider all roles in your life as you complete the diagram.

The first step is to identify the individuals, groups and entities that give you power. So, your list should start with your body (container of your soul, mind, talents, strengths, dreams and emotions), your beliefs or Deity, your family members, company, leaders, peers, customers, partners, associations, neighbors, etc. Your list will likely be different and that is the point – this is YOUR power base.

Figure 1 Example Power Base

Once you have your first version of individuals, groups and entities, you will no doubt identify more, but for now let’s move on. Next you will draw a diagram with yourself in the middle and the others around you. Next you will determine the strength of the relationship as they currently are. This is done by drawing solid lines to those with whom you are well connected, dotted lines to those connections you need to strengthen and no lines where you need to build connections. In my personal practice I use gradations of solid lines to show my most important relationships. 

Once the basic diagram has been constructed, you then have the opportunity to determine the kind of things that your powerbase has to offer and what you might have to offer them. Don’t forget, your powerbase have their own powerbase they are working with. This can be a delicate effort as you may have never considered the interchange between certain individuals or groups and yourself. While arduous, it is revelatory and powerful to consider. You may want to add a relationship with your own personal development/fitness as well so you can focus effort in that area. Before you, you now have a diagram of your life and the potential of your place in the universe.

AS IS vs. TO BE

This leadership practice of documenting powerbase, when considering where one has been, your life lessons, talents, gifts, and strengths, kernel of power, life mission and purpose can give you a visual measure of the impact you have had. More importantly, it demonstrates the objects which represent your ‘as is’ self and gives you a repeatable process to refine your “to be” leadership even more fully. To be clear, the ‘as is’ diagram is a depiction of your current reality. Your ‘to be’ is an iteration of the diagram where you consider changes in amount, quality and purpose for time spent in each relationship, the fruits of relationships and what could be if you made the changes. You can think of it simply as stay the same, ratchet back or drop, add new, invest more or any change that you feel will contribute more to your life balance and the mission that you have set for your life. What if one clarifies their potential by considering scenarios where they focus their strengths on relationships and better aligned with their purpose and passion? What might happen? A more powerful future, that’s what!

In the years since this article was first written, I discovered the most powerful addition to George's orginal teaching when I became certified to facilitate Crucial Conversations and I added that learning to this exercise. As you consider what you recieve from the relationship that makes you powerful, or not, simply writing what you provide the relationship is not enough. One must turn the equation around and ponder the folloing question. What is it that they percieve that I provide to the relationship. Once you ponder this and write it down, you may then have a crucial conversation with the individual, group or entity to see if you are aligned. In my experience, this is where the rub often comes. This internal work, soul work if that works for you, can unlock the future of the relationship and help you quickly heal problems or move on if the misalignment is too great. This nugget is worth the price of admission for the entire exercise and I hope you gain insight and understanding through it. For many this is the true power of the Powerbase exercise.

Figure 2 Mike's Powerbase

Mike’s Powerbase, is the seventh version of the powerbase diagram that the author has documented prior to 2008. What it allows me to do, is to annually review impacts and outcomes on a multi-faceted existence and consider new objectives for the next year. Arlene and I spent drive time to family vacation talking about the new realities of our growing family and decided to pull back on some commitments and renew commitments in other cases. I know do this without the diagram as years of practice have embedded it in my planning process. The dot in the center of ME denotes my Kernal of Power, as described by Kaleel Jamison in his book, “The Nibble Theory and the Kernal of Power: A Book about Leadership, Self-Empowerment, and Personal Growth,” another favorite. To give you an idea of the flexibility of the model, I’ll note a couple of our adjustments. 

Many years ago we started a monthly social evening for many families in our neighborhood. We thought that these gatherings would help emphasize the relationships we wanted our children to value and they were a lot of fun. However, when our 3rd child, Erika, was born, we quickly figured out that our life had changed significantly enough that we simply didn’t have the time and energy to prepare for and lead these important get-togethers. While we still value these relationships, we decided that the other added responsibilities would not allow us to resurrect these fun events. On the other hand, we added something. After a year off from children’s worship duties at church, we decided that my prep time to provide worship services once a month would be a great add for this school year. The boys enthusiastically agreed to add this back to our family commitments.  

Finally, I’ll share a professional add from a few years ago. After leaving the IT arena for a number of years to own a P&L and work in the marketing arena, we decided that it would be better for me to find a role that better aligned with my mission, experience base and would provide a direct connection to my passion of leadership development. I sought, and found, a company that creates IT solutions, is world class, whose mission I aligned with and valued relationships in the IT community, thus my move to Microsoft Corporation. I have enjoyed the last few years a great deal, learned a lot about the storage and recovery aspect of IT and my partners and enjoy a personal MBO (management by objective) to be a leadership ambassador in the IT community. These and other alignment decisions are helping our family be the blessing to the world that we can be. They change regularly and yours most likely will as well.

Figure 3 Mike's As Is Work Powerbase

Workplace Application

The powerbase can be further refined for each role in one’s life as well. Figure 3, Mike’s As Is Work Powerbase is my current professional reality based on new objectives in a new fiscal year. As an influence leader looking at my channels to market and resources to drive growth, the model gives me a unique view of my current reality and where I need to make my relationship and leadership bets to grow my relationships in order to successfully exceed growth expectations. So in this case, I’ve not only documented the H, M, L level of relationship via arrows or lack thereof, but I’ve color coded the relationships to emphasize the heat of the relationship in a traditional Green, Yellow, Red stoplight theme.  The grey relationships are those which need to be created. For me, each channel, or partner organization, represents revenue streams that must be invested in to grow,  Investments differ from channel to channel based on the culture of the partner and the way our businesses interact. Having this diagram allows me to plan the To Be and manage my day to day interactions and schedule to affect the change necessary to exceed plan. Your workplace powerbase may be completely different than mine, but documenting your reality will give you the knowledge you need to grow your power and become a better leader. It may also keep you from being blindsided by political changes and challenges that affect you. Like all things in leadership, your balance of power will constantly change; your emphasis will need to change as well.

When discussing this technique with the leaders of one institution, someone asked me if you could put your problems or issues on the list as well. The answer is, emphatically, yes! If one is apt to answer a question before it is asked or speak over their direct reports these weaknesses could be holding them and those they lead back. If one considers the time spent on destructive habits and the strength of those habitual relationships, it may be that potential to be more is being spent negatively. If those energies were better channeled, by removing the relationship from ones being, how much more buoyant and energetic and centered could one be. When one drops a negative habit, they need a positive habit to take its place. It makes sense that those energies redirected into more “profitable” relationships would increase one’s power and results.   

FIGURE 4 MIKE’S TEAM POWERBASE

Preparing for a Gallup Strengths Class at Time Warner Cable in April 2016 I connected the powerbase method directly to the Strengths practice of Knowing Yourself and Knowing others better by documenting the strengths of my daily v-team into a powerbase. In addition to the advantages listed above, now I know specifically what their strengths are, how I need to flex to work better with them and how to get a better result together.

That morning in 2001, while making our family favorite whole wheat chocolate chip waffles and watching the “Redeem” team playing Spain, my eight year old son, Michael Alexander (now a Sophomore at Baylor), asked “what was it like when I was in your tummy, mommy?” We had been talking about his belly button and the respect he should have for his mom because of it. I told him that if he could remember those days, he would remember being in the fetal position, eyes closed, floating softly in his mommy’s belly. He would be cognizant of the gentle thump thump of his mommies heart and every once in a while, he would have heard a faint rendition of “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine”, through the womb. He would not have been eating or drinking yet since the umbilical cord provided all his sustenance, all his power. As I lifted his now gangly and growing limbs into my arms, he smiled and hugged my neck as he and his siblings know this family favorite inside and out. To him, it pictures safety and security, love and sustenance, all the wonderful things and dreams, which his mother and I have for him, his brother and sister. Paul(now a sophomore in HS) came over for his hug as he had been listening intently to the rhythm of “Thump Thump, You are my Sunshine, Thump Thump, My only Sunshine, You Make me Happy…” that I had now established and quietly repeated. Erika, our one year old princess (now a 7th grader), was smiling from her high chair, remembering the love, while Arlene smiled and quietly cut peaches for dessert. 

_____

What are their strengths? Who are they made to be and to do? They have years to truly figure that out, with family, friends, mentors and teachers to provide connection and power to be their potential. 

Like Michael Phelps, do you know who you were made to be? Truly? Do I? Are we maximizing our potential, you and I? With whom can we align strengths towards breakthrough? Do we Trust them? Do we Trust ourselves? Are we peeling off the layers that get in our way to become our better selves? In whom do we find sustenance? 

Have fun with the powerbase exercise. It can and will make a difference in your life and in your leadership. It will take courage, patience, help, hard work and years of iterations, but that is easy for you! As always, let me know what you think!

Love and Peace, Mike

Interested in more on this topic and growing your leadership? Check out ABTP DFW's Senior Leadership Forum. A new session begins Saturday mornings in January.

Copyright ? Michael Rochelle, 2008 - 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703288.html

*George L. Peabody Episcopal Priest, Consultant

George L. Peabody, 88, an Episcopal priest who became an expert in

organizational development for the church and through his own consulting

firm, died Jan. 17 [2010] at his home in Beijing. He had pneumonia.

Dr. Peabody, the son and grandson of Episcopal ministers, spent much of his

early career working for the church in New York. Within the church, he

played a key role developing a national training program in human relations

and organizational change.

He moved to Washington in 1980. As a private consultant with a focus on

management development, his clients included corporations such as IBM and

AT&T and federal agencies such as the Defense Department, the Environmental

Protection Agency and the CIA.

He taught at more than 20 universities around the world and spent the 1990s

and 2000s teaching courses on the influence of power and values in the

workplace at the Institute on Business and Government Affairs, a summer

educational program organized and sponsored by the Fund for American Studies

at Georgetown University.

George Lee Peabody was born in Lawrence, Mass., and was the scion of an old

New England family. His grandfather, the Rev. Endicott Peabody, was the

founder and headmaster of the private Groton School in Massachusetts. George

Peabody's late brother, Endicott "Chub" Peabody, was a Massachusetts

governor and longtime Democratic Party leader.

Dr. Peabody was a 1942 graduate of the University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill. He received a master's in divinity from Episcopal Theological

School in Cambridge, Mass., and a doctorate in organizational behavior from

what is now the Ohio-based Union Institute and University distance learning

center.

During World War II, he served as gunnery officer in the Pacific and

participated in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

He went to China for medical treatment last year.

Survivors include his wife, Alice Tian Peabody of Beijing and Washington;

and two brothers, Samuel Peabody of New York and Malcolm "Mike" Peabody of

Washington.

--

Adam Bernstein