Use Your Power to Build Belonging at Work
Great power involves great responsibility.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Every day at work, you move through systems of power that influence your professional relationships. These systems of power are pervasive, and often impact your feelings about belonging at work. Have you ever taken the time to articulate how these systems operate, or to consider who initially designed them? For many workplaces, these systems of power often reinforce inequities embedded in our dominant culture, though they also have the potential to overcome them.
In my consulting practice, I challenge leaders to imagine how they could leverage their personal and positional power to build greater equity at work. I push leaders because many working in positions of power benefit from dominant culture. This culture offers a tremendous amount of unearned advantages to people who have dominant social identities – identities such as being white, educated, able-bodied, and born in the United States – people like me.
Dominant culture creates exclusion for people who have marginalized identities. Marginalized identities such as people who are queer and transgender. People who are also like me. I use myself as an example because you may also find yourself holding unearned privileges that result in feeling a strong sense of belonging in some contexts, and then in other contexts, you may find yourself feeling excluded because you also hold a marginalized, or multiple-marginalized identities. Finding the words to describe these systems of power and your relationship to them can often stir up feelings of fear, confusion, and overwhelm.
Despite these feelings, I encourage you to courageously reflect on your own experiences of dominant culture and where you may hold unearned power and privilege and where you don’t. When you think about how power functions in our dominant culture, is this kind of power accessible to you? Does the distribution of power feel fair to you? Does it help you feel a sense of belonging at work? What about for those who are the least likely to feel safe on the job? What is the cost if we settle for the systems of power as they are?
Consider Yourself
To begin an honest conversation about power and its role in advancing our DEI goals as we examine dominant culture systems, I encourage you to first explore where you hold power and where you do not based on aspects of who you are. To assist with this personal reflection, review the Wheel of Power/Privilege below illustrated by Sylvia Duckworth and adapted from the Canadian Council for Refugees.
As you review the illustration, note there are 12 different social identities that will help you acknowledge where you may hold social power and privilege, and where you don’t. Note that the greatest amount of power is concentrated in the center of the wheel, and the greatest amount of marginalization is found at the edges. As you review each category, consider all of the adjectives that describe who are as a person. This may include things like race, gender, class, etc. Then, locate your social identities on the power wheel.
This illustration helps you see how intersectionality impacts you, at an individual level. It acknowledges the contexts where you may hold social power, and other contexts where you may experience exclusion. To personalize this wheel, consider each of the 12 social identities, and note which part of each identity spectrum best describes who you are. Start by moving through the upper right corner of the wheel. Please note this section of the wheel investigates skin color, but not race.
This distinction is intentional and Anneliese A. Singh helps us understand why. In her book, the Racial Healing Handbook, she writes:
Because race alone is not a helpful social construction, skin color recognizes that racism really exists in social contexts based on the perceptions of what your race or the race of others might be, and your perceived race & the race you perceive of others matter a lot in society, because of white supremacy culture, or the false belief that white people are superior to people of color.
As you review the wheel, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 having a marginalized identity and 3 having a privileged identity. As you map yourself on this wheel, consider where you hold social power, and where you experience exclusion. What might be surprising to you, and what leaves you curious? If you were to trace a line around the wheel of your circle, what would that look like? Would it be a smooth circle around the inner ring of privilege, or around the outer ring of marginalization…or would it look more like mine - a jagged shape that resembles a jigsaw puzzle piece?
After you map yourself, consider discussing what you learned with a trusted friend or colleague. Maybe reflect on where you do, or do not, hold power, and discuss anything that came up for you during this process. Now consider your experiences in the workplace. Does holding or lacking power impact your sense of safety, trust, and belonging? After you answer these questions, take a deeper dive into learning more about the pedagogy of privilege from Justin W. S. Ford, one of our 2021 Belonging at Work Summit speakers:
Where does power come from?
As you work to answer these questions, let’s layer on where you may also hold personal and/or positional power inside the workplace. Holding this kind of power at work gives you the capacity to influence another person or a group of people to do something that you request. This kind of power comes from social influence, or the potential to change the beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors of a person or group due to an individual or group’s desire to conform with the dominant culture.
No matter your role, you have social power at work. It is relative and shifts depending on the context and people who surround you. Believe it or not, you can grow an infinite supply of certain forms of power. According to social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven, social power derives from six basic power sources. These power sources are divided into two core groups: 1) personal power and 2) positional power. Let’s explore these power sources in more detail below…
Personal Power
Expert power includes your lived experiences, your talents, and your genius. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, an expert is a person that has knowledge and skills learned over years of experience in a subject, and their opinion can be helpful in problem-solving. This type of expertise coupled with your own lived experiences offer an impressive power source that is all your own, and that can grow over time.
Example. To advance your organization’s DEI goals and grow your personal power, you could begin by increasing your knowledge and skills. This may include taking an online DEI course, enrolling in formal coursework at a college or university, getting a DEI coach, or serving as an apprenticeship with an established DEI practitioner.
Informational power comes from synthesizing complex concepts, knowledge or ideas that others need or want in order to solve a problem. Using this source of power makes sense when you hold information that is not readily accessible from a traditional source - a library, a database, or even a simple internet search. This power source doesn’t necessarily require expertise. Rather it depends on your ability to gain access to desirable information that can help overcome a challenge within your organization. You can grow this power source on your own.
Example. You can grow this power source by learning how to research promising DEI practices for your industry, and building a robust network of DEI practitioners to engage in knowledge sharing, lessons, learned, etc. Joining a DEI community care movement, like the Belonging at Work Community, is a great place to begin in growing this power.
Referent power is the last power source that anyone can develop, regardless of position. A person with referent power has unwavering ethics and the ability to establish trust by building strong and meaningful relationships with others. Having integrity, or doing the right thing when no one is watching, helps in establishing trust, respect, and credibility. Those with referent power possess a type of charisma and energy that often motivates and inspires fellow colleagues.
Example. Remember that when you make a commitment to advance your organization’s DEI goals, you will want to ensure that your words are aligned with meaningful actions. Consistent action coupled with deeply listening to your colleagues and collaborating with them expands this power source and builds a strong foundation of trust.
Positional Power
Legitimate power refers to the process of how a person obtains a leadership position including being hired, elected, appointed, or nominated to serve in a particular role. This leadership position often comes with some symbol of legitimacy such as a formal title or office. With this formal recognition also comes the specific responsibilities and authority to lead. Those with legitimate power possess a tremendous amount of authority, visibility, influence, social networks, and resources others within an organization do not readily have available.
Great power indeed requires great responsibility. If you hold legitimate power, remember that this is because there was a vote of confidence, or the belief that you will wield this power with great stewardship. In the DEI context, this means you will have the greater good in mind by steering your organization to a more equitable destination.
Reward power, comes from the ability to offer something of value in exchange for hard work and building an equitable culture. Rewards may come in the form of raises, more vacation days, promotions, stretch assignments, a holiday bonus, access to social influence, and much more. Rewards may also come in the form of employee recognition awards, a letter of reference, or the opportunity to choose a new assignment. The only limitations with reward power comes from a leader’s inability to innovate new ways to honor the hard work of their employees.
Using your positional power to reward your employees has the potential to dramatically improve employee morale and a sense of being valued on the job. When an employee has helped advance your workplace’s DEI goals, rewarding their contributions may inspire more people on your team take part in owning this work.
Coercive power uses force to compel an individual or a group of people to comply. Applying this kind of power comes from the outdated command-and-control approach to leadership. The application of this power show signs of a toxic workplace culture – a culture embracing Niccolò Machiavelli’s belief that it’s better to be feared than to be loved. It elicits fear to motivate another person or group of people to behave in a particular manner. Coercive power often includes the ability to refuse to hire, demote, deny privileges, or fire an employee.
Using this kind of positional power is the antithesis to advancing your DEI goals. Those who leverage coercive power run the risk of cultivating a toxic culture at work. As a result, be wary of mandating DEI trainings or forcing employees on your team to change their behavior. While well-intended, these actions may drive resistance to this work.
Now that you have a better idea of the 6 sources of social power, and how they may show up in the workplace, take a moment to rank them on a scale of 1 -3, with 1 being least likely to hold this kind of power at work, and 3 being most likely to hold this kind of power. Under the personal power sources, where do you hold the most power? What positional power (if any) do you hold? How might you use your relative power to advance your organization’s DEI goals?
Your Work
In the context of building an emotional outcome of belonging for your employees, the unearned power and privilege you gain from aspects of your social identities has the potential to influence more of your colleagues to join the effort of building a more equitable culture at work. Important to recognize – it also has the potential to stymie your organization’s DEI goals should you lack awareness around the power and privilege you may hold and how you use it. Lacking this awareness will also cause emotional harm to your colleagues that already experience some degree of marginalization and exclusion on the job.
Now, consider your workplace. If your leadership team has developed DEI goals, how might you use the relative power and privilege you hold to advance them? How could you grow your personal power sources to champion them? If your organization has yet to develop these goals, do you hold some level of positional power to begin the work to develop them, or at least reward employees who are practicing behaviors that create a more equitable culture? What one action could you take to hold accountable those in your organization with the most power? What about this action feels within reach, and what feels too risky?
Remember, no matter who you are, or where you sit within your organization, you do have the power to influence those you work within closest proximity. Consider what might be available to you when it comes to growing your personal power that come from these sources: expert, informational and referent. Good news! You have already grown your expert power by making it to the end of this post. Now grow your informational power by sharing it with a trusted colleague.
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