Power and love, together, are generative
“Power without Love is reckless & abusive
Love without power is sentimental & anaemic”
Every organisation struggles with balancing the issue of “task” versus “people”. It turns out that it is almost impossible to balance these two imperatives. Both as individuals and as groups of people, we tend to lean one way or the other in a binary sense.
Most psychometrics reveal this binary dynamic and organisational culture grows out of it. Cultures are either coercive (authoritarian, hierarchical, forceful) – task focused, or empathic (caring, forgiving, humanistic) – people focused.
Culture is loosely defined as “the way we do things around here. Culture is like the magnetic field of an organisation. It exerts an unseen force field that is irresistible. Anyone who resists this force field will soon be an outlier and will need to create their own sub-culture that works against the flow. The culture may already be toxic, but this dysfunction just adds to the dissonance.
Martin Luther King in a speech said “Power without Love is reckless & abusive. Love without power is sentimental & anaemic”. Adam Kahane quoted MLK in his book “Power and Love” and said that power and love are generative.
Love is what makes power generative instead of degenerative. Power is what makes love generative instead of degenerative. Power and love are therefore exactly complimentary, according to Kahane.
Generative in this context means to create positive and holistic outcomes through both cause and effect. Leaning either way is degenerative. Power alone is not sustainable because it will lead to a dead, robotic and aggressive culture. Love alone is not sustainable because it will lead to a weak, compliant and listless culture.
A generative culture which is based on power and love is vested in an authoritative culture (not authoritarian). In this respect authoritative means to behave in integrity. To have direction, purpose, to be in control, to be respectful, to be inclusive. To be committed to doing what you said you would do as a generative outcome.
In my experience, people easily understand the notion of power. When we start to discuss love, it’s another matter. Love in a work context is misconstrued as something soft, pertaining to the heart, romantic, timid, feminine. Not appropriate to managing an organisation. You just can’t get things done. Business is not a charity or a democracy. There needs to be discipline and accountability. These are apparently not the attributes of love. Accountability is just one of the key victims as it falls between these two poles.
It turns out that getting the balance between power and love is difficult to achieve. It takes courage. The ability to stand in the face of fear. It’s a relational thing. Your relationship to yourself and to others is the platform for your integrity and self-actualisation, and that of your organisation. It’s much easier to sell out and do the work-arounds, even though the outcome is sub-standard, degrading and self-destructive.
So, the work of generativity is the ability to exercise both power and love because they are complimentary. Perhaps they are the yin and yang of what we so loosely refer to as leadership? But that’s another blog.
© Graham Richardson, 2023