For many people, the word power has a negative connotation. They’d rather avoid using power altogether. I can feel that, and I can definitely feel that about the abuse of power.
But does that make it unethical to talk about power? Power is everywhere, and conflict too. There is no society without a power structure. There are always differences of opinions in any group, if only to decide when to have lunch.
Without exercising power, no group will survive, likely to the detriment of its members. A former colleague of mine, who served as a lieutenant of an armored infantry platoon, shared many leadership lessons with me. One crucial lesson was that as a combat vehicle leader, your job is to use your power to choose and enforce a direction in which the group moves as it exits the vehicle in a battle. It does not matter which direction, as long as everybody moves in the same direction. To do otherwise endangers the group. Following the direction of the leader, and their power, is not a concession or a compromise in this case, but a survival tactic.
And when it comes to power abuse, we still need to understand the power in order to understand the abuse, and our possible response to it. As the famous general Sun Tzu allegedly wrote more than 2000 years ago: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
This understanding of power structures extends to our modern contexts as well. For example, creating digital infrastructures at scale requires agreements on technical standards. Organisations like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) create standards that are subsequently used to enforce collaboration on interoperability. This resolves conflicts between individual companies and benefits all of them. Successful Open Source projects have clear governance structures which balance power and interests of individuals with that of the community as a whole. Linux, Apache and Mozilla are great examples here.
There is therefore no shame in studying power. On the contrary, it is morally necessary to reach common objectives and avoid abuse. Let’s continue by diving into some specific power roles.