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Taking and giving the right amount of Power
Hello guys,
Context:
In short, we had to find a solution for our new planning between colleagues. One of them did not come (colleague Z) and asked one of us (colleague C) "to summarize for her" the content of our discussion. Power move, of course as she tasked her. Then, the colleague tasked me to do this "short summary" to her. I accepted in the first place to help colleague C who was at work when we had our meeting. Then I refused because colleague C
So in short: colleague Z (who's "on holiday at a dinner") tasks colleague C (who's working at the moment of the call) to summarize for her the content of the meeting that I organized. I'm also on holiday by the way and it's a shitty excuse anyway.
Then, she sends us an audio message to make up for her laziness. And here is my mistake, I said: "thank you for your audio message" as a friendly gesture. And she said "you're welcome". So it was as if she was doing us a favor by not coming and sending us a 1 min audio message.
So it's important to give away power to allies and build people up for acts of good will but not to give it away to takers and opportunists. As they won't reciprocate when the time comes just as they don't for other matters.
So Power is a resource like Time and Money. Not to be wasted. Let us use it wisely. As wisely as possible!
Any thoughts or comments?
Very good observation, and very good lesson learned.
She didn't deserve a "thank you" at that point.
Or, at least, not such a full-fledged thank you.
Maybe more a "passing by thank you", like "sounds good, thanks".
Your message would have still been OK, and even good, if the colleague had been a kind person, a natural collaborator, or a good friend.
Because in that case, they would have said something like "my pleasure, sorry for the delay" or "thanks to you guys". Basically, they would have said anything that gives power back to you.
Instead, she used the opportunity for "power scalping".
Definitely!
And on second thoughts, I'm loving the title and the direction of this post.
It touches on a topic that it's probably not yet stressed enoguh here, but that should be one of the fundamentals of power dynamics / advanced social skills:
- Who and when to give power to
Setting up collaborative and win-win relationships is often about empowering others.
And a (socially) successful life is in large part developing people around you who are going to empower you back.
On the other hand, one of the major social mistake people commit when starting out on power dynamics / self-development, is to focus on getting as much power as possible, no matter what, which makes them come across as dickheads, isolating them from the very people who have the most to give.
I'm going to add a note about this on the "fundamentals of power".
