To set the stage for examining the internal structures that drive good and poor use of power, it is helpful to first acknowledge the ground-breaking research by Julie Diamond who showed seven key areas where power is used by managers in everyday interactions (www.diamondleadership.com). From her research Julie has developed the Diamond Power Index (DPI), a survey tool measuring how a manager uses power across a scale in each of the seven areas.
The Seven Scales of the Diamond Power Index
The seven scales of the DPI are:
- Intimidating vs Approachable
- Inappropriate vs Respectful
- Disengaging vs Empowering
- Conflict averse vs Conflict competent
- Preferential vs Fair
- Indiscrete vs Diplomatic
- Indulgent vs Judicious
Each of these scales represents a key area in which managers can use power well or poorly.
Understanding the Primary Dilemmas of Poor Power Use
When a manager’s use of power places them at the poor power use end of any of the seven scales they are likely to be preoccupied with certain primary dilemmas on a day-to-day basis. In each case the primary dilemmas will be centred onpersonal threat and concerns of survival.
Personal threat can be usefully articulated by an “if …, then …” statement, i.e. if a particular bad thing happens, then I will be facing a particular personal threat of some kind.
For instance, “if I don’t get this report in tomorrow, I’ll get fired”, or “If they don’t get back to me by the end of the day, I will miss my deadline and it will be awful!” In other words, the primary, underlying dilemmas that preoccupy poor power users are connected to personal threat and the anxiety that goes with that threat. I wonder….can you relate?
How Primary Dilemmas Drive the FTD Triad
Primary dilemmas in turn drive the FTD (Feeling, Thinking, Doing) triad of the manager. When a survival-threatening primary dilemma is the primary driver of the FTD triad, we can expect that the manager will demonstrate behaviour (doing) that could be uncivil, disengaging, rude, threatening, illegal or even dangerous. That is, behaviours that are a poor use of power. Most of us will go to great lengths to avoid deep personal threat, or lessen uncomfortable feelings, and when we do, survival behaviours are likely to become the behaviours of choice.
The Unconscious Nature of Poor Power Use
Most managers who use power poorly usually hold their primary dilemmas unconsciously. Most will be unaware that these assumptions are hard at work, creating uncomfortable feelings including worry, that in turn shape the manager’s thinking and direct the manager’s behaviour (doing).
The Feeling Component: Navigating Negative Emotional States
The feeling component of the FTD triad comprises various negative feelings that are generated by survival dilemmas, and which also work to reinforce those dilemmas. These feelings range between frustration, inadequacy, anxiety, angst, sadness and numbness. Building our personal awareness of which cluster of negative feelings we tend to favour provides us great leverage in our journey away from survival towards more consciously chosen dilemmas, and FTD triads that lead to good power use.
Thinking Patterns: Self-Aggrandising and Self-Diminishing
The work of renowned psychiatrist Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis (Horney, 1945) provides great insight into the two main thinking patterns that constitute the thinking part of the FTD triad of the manager who uses power poorly.
Horney identified “idealised” and “despised” thinking patterns, which I call the “self-aggrandising” and “self-diminishing” patterns. Both of these broad categories of thinking patterns are unhelpful and a generally unconscious reaction to the persistent feelings of stress, anxiety, worry, frustration etc that accompany the survival dilemmas these managers are navigating each day. When influenced by survival dilemmas, our thinking tends to flip-flop between these two patterns of thought.
More recently, Bene Brown in The Gifts of Imperfection (Brown, 2010), echoed the same insight when she explained that when faced with challenging situations she exhorts herself: “Don’t shrink. Don’t puff up. Stand your sacred ground.” Here she is identifying the same two reactionary thinking patterns described by Karen Horney decades earlier. That is, she is reminding herself not to engage in self-diminishing (shrinking) or self-aggrandising (puffing up) thinking patterns; but rather, to choose her authentic self.
In the cases of both the self-aggrandising and self-diminishing patterns of thought, the manager tends to engage in them unconsciously, compulsively, instantaneously and indiscriminately. What is most interesting is that both of these lines of thought lead to the same patterns of poor power use behaviour!
The Doing Component: Observable Poor Power Behaviours
The doing part of the FTD triad has been thoroughly mapped by the Diamond Power Index and is discussed and expanded in my book, Bosses Behaving Badly. In general, the poor power use behaviours tend to be uncivil, rude, insensitive, threatening, alienating, unethical, dangerous or illegal behaviours. In all cases, these behaviours, especially when exhibited by managers, tend to diminish engagement and psychological safety in others. In other words, they are highly ineffective and counterproductive to any worthwhile objective. In later newsletters, I’ll describe in clear behavioural terms what the manager looks like, that is what they actually do, when located at either end of these important scales.
Poor power use behaviours are generally chosen for the short-term relief they provide from pre-existing painful feelings.
To explore the effects of primary dilemmas and the FTD triad, in the next article we will take a deeper dive into one of the DPI’s seven scales – Intimidating v Approachable.
Dr. Paul Donovan
