Power in the Right Hands

In my research investigating the ancient leadership wisdom of First Nation societies, one of the memorable conversations I had was with a Samburu elder in northern Kenya. Over several meetings with Lmusari (Mark) Lenanyankerra (pictured), one of the subjects Mark touched on was his view on power. His comments linger with me still.

‘The chief,’ he said, ‘is given all powers, so you want those powers in the hands of a decent person. The powers include casting people out or cursing someone to die and the chief can punish anyone. You don’t want those powers in the wrong hands.’

Good leadership is partly about the appropriate use of power. Upon appointment, at any level of an organisation, leaders are given relatively more power than followers. How does each leader use the power of their role? And does the organisation monitor how leaders use, or abuse, power?

Back in 1971, a sobering experiment was conducted studying the use of power. The study was led by Dr Philip Zimbardo and is known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. I doubt the experiment would be approved now-a-days by a university’s ethics committee.?

In the basement of Stanford University’s psychology department, a mock prison was constructed. From a large group of volunteers, 24 male students were selected and randomly assigned by the flip of a coin to be guards or prisoners. The purpose of the study was to observe behaviour in institutions, and for the purpose of this newsletter, we can include organisations as an institution.

The orientation of guards and prisoners to their roles was distinctly different. On the one hand, guards were given no special instructions or training on how to be guards – sadly like many workplaces that appoint managers but don’t invest in training nor instruction on standards of leadership. Guards were free, within limits, to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the obedience of the prisoners. ?

On the other hand, prisoners were oriented to their role just like real suspects are treated. They were collected from their homes by police, charged, warned of their rights, searched and handcuffed. The suspect was then taken to a holding cell and blindfolded. They were given a prison number which was then used as their form of identification instead of their name. Anonymity was further created by issuing a stocking cap that prisoners were then to wear as a substitute of having one’s hair shaved in real life.

The behaviour of guards and prisoners that almost immediately occurred was so extreme that the experiment was abandoned after six days rather than allowed to run for the planned two weeks. Many of the guards displayed cruel and sadistic behaviour towards prisoners, while prisoners tended to become depressed and hopeless.

Even after just 24 hours people forgot that they were in a simulation and acted according to their role. On the morning of the second day, the prisoners staged a rebellion – probably aimed at asserting power and individual identity. Guards responded through a psychological tactic of setting up a privileged cell where prisoners least involved in the rebellion were given special privileges while the activist prisoners who had challenged authority were denied privileges. On it went for five more days before the experiment was called off. ?

The researchers characterised the guards as falling into one of three groupings, similar to how managers in workplaces behave without standards of leadership imposed by senior leaders. There were the tough but fair guards whose orders were always within the prescribed rules of prison operation. Then there were several guards who felt genuinely sorry for the prisoners and never treated them badly. And finally, ‘about a third of the guards were extremely hostile, arbitrary, inventive in their forms of degradation and humiliation, and appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded when they put on the guard uniform and stepped out into the yard with big stick in hand.’

Each prisoner coped with the sense of powerlessness and growing sense of helplessness in their own way. In the beginning some prisoners coped by being rebellious. Four of the prisoners reacted emotionally, breaking down. Some tried to cope by being good prisoners, doing everything the guards wanted them to do. ?

The experiment demonstrated what Mark Lenanyankerra had told me about leadership power: ‘…you want those powers in the hands of a decent person.’ With the variability of how people use power, it’s important that organisations a) choose leaders carefully, b) establish standards of leadership behaviour, c) train leaders to fulfill their role and d) then monitor and enforce the standards. And it’s vital that individual leaders use power consciously and carefully.