Impact with Integrity by Becky Margiotta

Author:Becky Margiotta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Girl Friday Books
Published: 2022-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Reckoning with Positional Power

When I was a graduate student at The New School, I did a fairly exhaustive study of all the different models of leadership. The one that seemed to hold the most weight at the time was this: teams are needed to get anything meaningful done in the world, and it doesn’t matter who the team leader is, so long as there is one. So if you think of your positional power as a way of being of service to those on your team, you’re headed in the right direction.

Sometimes, you might be reluctant to claim your power. But a leader’s ambivalence or avoidance of stepping into the authority conferred by their positional power can be just as problematic as being overly authoritarian. Maybe you don’t want to be overbearing, or maybe you worked under someone who abused their power and don’t want to be like that. Maybe you are second-guessing yourself because of some aspect of your identity that is marginalized in our society. However, denying your own positional power can take you right to the Victim persona on the Drama Triangle, creating problems such as indecision and wasted effort.

I’ve found that my liberal or progressive-leaning friends can be especially reluctant to claim their positional power, as if somehow authority itself is bad. It’s not. We had a saying in the army: “When in charge, take charge!” I want more social change leaders to take that to heart. When you are entrusted with authority, you have the opportunity—dare I say, the responsibility—to use that authority to advance healing, justice, and transformation. So take charge!

If you’re ambivalent about being a leader, my question for you is this: In terms of the change you seek in the world, how can you use every ounce of your positional power in service of what matters?

Get aligned from head to toe with your power and how you intend to use it in service of what you are committed to. When you have positional power, your job is not holding people accountable; rather it is establishing meaningful partnerships and providing material support toward achieving a shared goal. My former boss Rosanne Haggerty once told me in a supervision meeting, “Consider me your secret weapon.” She was inviting me to bring her in to break through barriers as needed, and she was really good at doing that. So much so that my team affectionately referred to her as the “R-bomb.” As in, “Don’t make us call in the R-bomb on this one.”

Here are some other productive ways to envision how you might leverage or employ your authority:

Make sure everyone understands the tasks ahead of them.

Prioritize and coordinate across related efforts.

Secure resources to remove scarcity conditions.

Allocate resources so everyone has what they need.

Notice when a decision needs to be made and decide how it will get made.

Tend to the well-being of the people on your teams.

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