Can an Educational Leader be Powerful AND Kind? (Challenge #90)

Can an educational leader—or the organization they lead—be both powerful and kind? Well, Lord Acton, an English historian and politician, said that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s hard to argue with that interpretation, when considering all the cruelties and injustices in the world that we try to address every day in our schools and libraries. Of course, there’s another famous quote when it comes to the intersection of power and ethics. It’s from a different British historian and politician, Sir Winston Churchill: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded”. Or, as comics writer Stan Lee put it a few years later in Spiderman’s origin story—With great power comes great responsibility. 

Now, between you and me, I don’t think I totally agree that power necessarily leads to either corruption OR heroism. I’m on the side of a third historian, the political biographer Robert Caro. He sums up the matter like this: “Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.”

If you are a leader, either informal or formal, what does your use of power reveal about you? And are there ways we can wield our power to build a better world?

Those are the questions we’re gonna explore today. 

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Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, where every Monday morning I teach you how to heal your school or library in the next ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to advise a growing community of educational and library leaders who want to build a better world without burning out. 

Kind leaders make the tough decisions without becoming jerks. We plan effective systems that help us get the job done with less money and effort. And we’ve learned that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, any vision becomes possible. To be clear, Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but it’s rarely easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around to learn how to create a legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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This episode was actually inspired by my recent reading of the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene. This book is well known amongst leadership nerds like me, and it’s also pretty controversial. I may discuss this book in more depth on one of my linkedin book talks. but let’s just say that my opinion about the book itself is pretty mixed. That said, I do agree with Robert Greene’s definition of power. His slightly long version goes like this: “Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection. Power works best when it is indirect — never coercing people; instead, getting them to voluntarily align with your interests.” I wouldn’t call his definition of power warm and fuzzy, but he’s at least a little more optimistic about power’s potential for good than our friend Lord Acton.
 
 So let’s start from a summary of Robert Greene’s definition or power—essentially that power is the amount of influence we have over our lives and the actions of others. How might the three skills of kind leadership help us wield power in a way that makes it more likely that our efforts will help create a better educated and informed community? 

Well, growing humanely, the skill of deciding on a course of action that’s intentionally grounded in our feelings and values, can be seen as a means of gaining more power over ourselves. Rather than either shooting from the hip in a fit of emotion, or suppressing our feelings and values as irrelevant, we use them as data about our interpretation of the problem we’re facing, and consciously choose a path that honors who we are, and what we want to see in the world. In other words, when we use the skills of growing humanely to make a decision to use our power, we reveal a confidence in ourselves and our values to attain our goals. This in turn influences our faith in ourselves, and others’ belief in our decision-making abilities.

Just as growing humanely is a way to gain more conscious influence over our decision-making, managing effectively influences the likelihood that a kind leader will actually accomplish what they set out to do. When making a plan to execute a decision, I believe all the power experts referenced above would agree that you have to have an accurate assessment of both the actual facts on the ground and the resources you have in hand to address those facts in order to develop a workable action plan. By wielding our power to manage effectively, we reveal we have the competence to actually execute on our goals rather than just talking about them. This competence becomes a virtuous cycle as we learn from one project to better plan for the next, and the fruits of our competence can influence others to see that aspect of our power as an asset to them.   

Which leads us to the third kind leadership skill, creating collaboratively—where we gather others perspectives, and influence them to join us in refining and implementing our goals and their related plans, so that we can achieve whatever our shared vision of a better world is in this context. Ultimately education is a team sport—I’ve seen too many overconfident, skilled leaders think they can transform a school or library on their own, only to ruffle feathers, spark rebellions, and fall flat on their faces in the end. By inviting and coaxing your team and your stakeholders to work with you toward a goal, a natural consequence of that process of influence will be an increased trust in each other and your shared vision that will allow you to stand together and powerfully handle whatever challenges come up. 

I didn’t call my model of leadership kind because it’s ethical and soothes your ego. I call it kind because it works to heal ourselves, our organizations, and our communities. I, guild members, and podcast listeners can all testify to the power of growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively to achieve our ends. Which leads me to this week’s kind leadership challenge: Since we can’t accomplish much in the world without power, kind leaders are actually best off making a study of power, how it works, and how we can best wield and steward the power we have to build a better world without burning out our minds, our bodies, or most importantly, our souls. Let’s start that process by exploring a simple question—is there anything about wielding our power that makes us uncomfortable, and if so, what could we do to get more comfortable with it? 

Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge, and for growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively in your own organization. And if you know someone who might find this episode helpful, hit share in your podcast app or send them over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/90. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.