Kinds of Power

Power is an interesting thing, in that it takes leadership and power as an element of leadership to move forward and achieve anything, yet power seems to have a smidge of negativity.

Am I powerful person? I don't like to apply that word to myself because of the negative tinge. I would say that I am a person with many responsibilities. If responsibility is the internal view of what is externally seen as power, then I have some. I manage my office, I manage the local Property Managers group, I have some influence the student groups with whom I work.

I hope to become better as a person who empowers others. I try to delegate, to teach, to assign work in digestible, understandable steps, so that others can learn. In our textbook the steps toward empowerment I found very applicable and it has changed some of the ways I teach.

We discussed how to cultivate power, I would like the power and influence from a good reputation, or a reputation for intelligence or the ability to get the job done. Sometimes I give good advice, but don't have the personal power or charisma to convince people, so I have to do more work to demonstrate my position, which wastes time. I think the way to cultivate that power is to be intelligent, and be ready for new experiences when they come my way.

One way that maybe seems a little silly is Caller-ID. We have a relatively new phone system at work, there were many improvements, but we lost caller ID and the labor and material costs to re-install it is about $1000.00. I think our office should spend this money because knowing who is calling when you pick up the phone makes you more knowlegeable when you answer the phone, the two seconds of forewarning of the callers identity is the difference between sounding like "huh?" and "of course I know who you are, and what you are calling about." It's important.