Ironies Leaders Navigate: What the Science of Power Reveals about the Art of Leadership and the Distinct Art of Church Leadership

By Schuyler Totman

Leaders constantly rely upon power. In fact, leadership and power have so much in common that their definitions are often functionally identical. Every act of leadership is an act of power. Hence, the better we understand power, the better we understand leadership. What, then, are the consequences if, as scholars argue, different people understand power differently and often fundamentally misunderstand power?
One consequence turns out to be the emergence of a number of ironies. Another consequence is the opportunity to understand leadership settings better through a careful, redeeming, synergistic look at power. To that end, this book first presents roughly sixty studied, power-related dynamics, and then takes a closer look at how these dynamics clarify leadership settings.
Ultimately, this study seeks a better understanding of a particular leadership setting--the local church. Challenges distinct to this setting are explored in marked sections, while the book as a whole offers useful lenses through which to assess the challenges all leaders navigate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630877682

Schuyler Totman

An occasional leader and a constant student of leadership, Schuyler Totman is the founder of Same Door Resources, an organization that works with leaders and groups to manage conflict by understanding it before it happens. He also helps to prepare expectant fathers to become excellent dads through several hospitals around Denver, CO, where he lives with his patient wife Michelle and their two precocious children.

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Ironies Leaders Navigate

What the Science of Power Reveals about the Art of Leadership and the Distinct Art of Church Leadership

Schuyler Totman

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Ironies Leaders Navigate

What the Science of Power Reveals about the Art of Leadership and the Distinct Art of Church Leadership

Copyright © 2014 Schuyler Totman. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-551-7

EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-768-2

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/26/2015

Scripture verses taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Dedicated to

Mary Harrison Totman

As is illustrated by the vast literature on power from philosophy, history, sociology, political science, and psychology, there are about as many conceptualizations of power as there are authors who have written on it.¹

—Peter Coleman

There are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept.²

—Bernard Bass

1. Coleman, Handbook of Conflict Resolution.

109

.

2. Bass, Concepts of Leadership.

16

.

Introduction

When someone calls a book thin, does this describe its width or its lack of substance? Or when someone recommends a book by assuring you it’s an easy read, how should that be interpreted?

This book likely won’t be recommended as an easy read. But it is thin, perhaps in more than one way, because thin turns out to be plenty. Here is little more than a glossary of studied terms and definitions, along with examples and observations.

But these terms scrutinize power, an uneasy term in itself, as Chapter 1 explores. And though they describe fleeting, instinctive dynamics, these terms have complex names like interpersonal linkage power and small power-distance culture. Still, the concepts themselves are straightforward. Many will make sense even before examples are given. And much can be gained in short order by simply comparing, combining, and contrasting these scholarly terms and definitions. For example, this book hinges on a comparison between the two simplest definitions it presents:

• Leadership has been defined as intentional influence.³

• Power has been defined as purposive influence.⁴

This remarkable yet reasonable similarity between power and leadership persists even as definitions of each become more varied and complex. Chapter 2 will demonstrate this by comparing ten definitions of each. Two safe but sweeping conclusions can be drawn from this near-synonymous resemblance. First, every act of leadership is an act of power. Second, the better we understand power, the better we understand leadership.

And scholars of power describe in a varied chorus how power is often misunderstood. They also describe how different people understand power differently, and how people understand other people’s power very differently. Scholars also lament how power is often under-understood, equated only with coercion, competition, and corruption. A brief book, while far from comprehensive, can help clarify leadership settings by describing how the power inherent in leadership is differently understood, misunderstood, and under-understood.

However, if studying power helps to clarify leadership settings, it does not help to simplify them. Examining leadership through the lens of power is like holding an X-ray up to flat light or looking at a petri dish under a microscope. The simple becomes complex. The latent becomes defining. One familiar concept suddenly becomes multiple nuanced dynamics. The basic concept of trust, for example, will be differentiated into calculus-based trust and identification-based trust,⁵ and trust will be studiously distinguished from distrust. Power itself will be described in overlapping terms like individual power, social power, trust-based power, distrust-based power, expert power, and resource control power.

Still, these terms only clarify dynamics leaders already experience. The study of power does not really offer anything new about leadership settings, but instead names and explores existing dynamics in magnified detail. Many if not all the challenges this book seeks to articulate are ones leaders already appreciate on some level.

Another reason this book may not be an easy read is because the concepts it presents intertwine on many levels. They mutually define each other. The reader must grasp concepts presented in early chapters well enough to apply them, yet loosely enough to allow this understanding to be augmented. It may help to compare these dynamics to ingredients in a stew. Those added later impact those added earlier, and the whole combination is affected when heat is applied. And just as four different cooks will make four different stews from the same ingredients, four different leaders will lead very differently based on how they appreciate and navigate these dynamics.

Therefore this book is constructed much like a recipe, defining studied concepts in early chapters and then delving into how they interact later. Specifically, the first five chapters introduce, define, and exemplify roughly sixty dynamics, and remaining chapters explore key concepts like trust and authority further. Those observations meriting debate, and some might, are presented only in later chapters.

This study also uncovered many ironies, which in themselves are not easy to comprehend. Ironies make one slow down and ask, How did this happen? But the term irony, like power, is one name for many concepts. The ironies presented here are, with few exceptions, situational ironies, falling under the definition: A situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected.⁶ One example of situational irony is, If you have a phobia of long words you have to tell people that you have Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliopho-bia?⁷ Another example is a pyrrhic victory, one so costly that it leaves the victor effectively defeated. (It should be noted that ironies are to some degree artistic and subjective, based as they are on expectations and assumptions. One person may find something ironic that another does not, and some ironies are more ironic than others.)

Many of the ironies described here should be familiar to leaders. Some, like the irony of Al Capone and the ironies of given authority, are inevitable. They just describe how it is for leaders. Others, such as the consumer’s irony, are effectively unavoidable. Some leaders might consider the mentor’s irony and the irony of trusting distrust ideal; symptoms of effective, empowering leadership. And some of these ironies, such as the terrorist’s irony and the double irony of the coercive leader, are both self-imposed and self-defeating.

These ironies allude to a final reason why this book should be brief, and should not be an easy read. Leadership is not the work of studying concepts and definitions. Rather, leadership is a work of art. As Dwight D. Eisenhower advised, Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. Michael McKinney furthers this perspective: To reduce leadership to a set of algorithms is to remove it from its context; to ignore the complexities, the contradictions, and the possibilities. Artists must deal with uncertainty, contradictions and diversity almost by definition. Leaders need to have this capacity.⁸ The concepts presented here shed light on these complexities and possibilities, but do not reduce or control them. And the ironies encapsulate the uncertainty, contradictions, and diversity leaders encounter as they lead.

Much more could be written about every concept and dynamic presented, but this might actually interfere with the intent. The hope is that this book helps leaders better appreciate their power, resulting in the wise, constructive use of it in ways that come naturally to each. The emphasis on examples and ironies, along with the many questions asked, may do more to achieve this gauzy end than any academic knowledge conveyed. In short, this book does its best to not be a how-to book. Much like Robert Greenleaf warns that servant leadership must not be a deliberately undertaken gimmick, but rather an inner drive to just be it,⁹ each leader’s use of power must be authentic and artistic.

Should we talk about power in church?

Understanding power helps to differentiate one leader from another, and one leadership setting from another. Leadership challenges within an accounting firm, for example, differ from those within a public middle school. The impetus for this book was a better understanding of a particular leadership setting: the local church. But studying challenges unique to this setting, even in brief sketch, required a circuitous but ultimately fascinating approach. This included looking at what the study of social power reveals about leadership in general, and then, by comparison and contrast, what it reveals about The Church and its leader, Jesus Christ, and then exploring some of the unique challenges local church leaders face.

As a result, this book will be thinner for some than others. Those not intrigued by distinct challenges faced within local churches, and within The Church, can pass over those pages with content framed in lined boxes, like the next one. The rest appear after chapter 5. (Note: A few examples of power dynamics from Scripture will be used outside these boxes, because they are simply too illustrative to pass by.)

On power and Power in church and The Church

But isn’t the local church, and The Church—i.e. the ecclesia, that beloved community of those called out—about higher concepts like love, and the Power of God, rather than mere human power? As Paul emphasizes,

My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might rest not on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. (

1

Corinthians

2

:

4

)

Yes, and the study of power reveals much about Power. The two often work the same, and very often work together:

[But] you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts

1

:

8

)

Besides, Paul’s declaration to the Corinthians is ironic, in that he seeks to persuade with words describing how he did not use persuasive words.

Church leaders, and The Church’s leader, navigate all the power-related dynamics that other leaders experience, and a few more. Every parable Jesus tells is a means of purposive influence, for example, and every parable involving relationships hinges on power in what it teaches. The parable of the prodigal son illustrates almost every concept this book presents.

Further, those vividly miraculous instances in which Power works entirely apart from power, and those unnecessary, even egregious instances in which power works entirely in lieu of Power, come into sharper contrast. And the study of power provides a distinct, if a bit clumsy, perspective on love. Finally, Jesus’ interactions with those closest to him, such as Martha’s tirade at him described in Luke 10, provide some of the more amusing examples of power dynamics in all of literature.

3. McKinney, Leading Thoughts

4. Deutsch, Resolution of Conflict,

87

.

5. Lewicki and Wiethoff, Trust, Trust Development, and Trust Repair,

93

.

6. Merriam-Webster Online, irony.

7. Isitironic.com, Examples of Irony.

8. McKinney, Leading Thoughts

9. Greenleaf, Power of Servant Leadership,

145

.

Chapter 1

A Redeeming Look at Power

How Exactly Are Leadership and Power Related?

The answer to this question presents itself when definitions of each are placed adjacent. Consider three pairings as examples:

Power is deliberate or purposive influence.¹

—Morton Deutsch

Leadership is intentional influence.²

—Michael McKinney

[Power is] the ability to bring about desired outcomes.³

—Peter T. Coleman

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.⁴

—Warren Bennis

By social power we mean an individual’s potentiality for influencing one or more other persons toward acting or changing in a given direction.⁵

—George Levinger

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.⁶

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

Even as definitions of power and leadership vary from one another and increase in complexity—chapter 2 will compare ten of each—the two basic conclusions presented in the introduction remain safe. First, every act of leadership is an act of power. Second, the better we understand power, the better we understand leadership.

Exploring power does indeed reveal much about leadership. Power, including the many forms it takes and the many dynamics that shape it, has been studied in careful detail. Even a basic overview shines a bright, almost clinical light on leadership and leadership settings. Still, the study of power does not offer anything new about leadership.