Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics - Softcover

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Cyndi Suarez works with leaders in nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and social movements, including most recently the Movement for Black Lives. She helps social change leaders move from struggle to flow by helping them build elegant ideas and structures. She lives in Boston, MA.

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Liberate yourself by understanding and mastering power dynamics

"A comprehensive operations manual for…quite literally enacting our way to freedom."― GIBRAN RIVERA, Master Facilitator

"This book is masterful. …The handbook every person who considers themselves working to bring about a more just and compassionate world should read and carry with them throughout their journey."― CEASAR McDOWELL, Professor of the Practice of Civic Design, MIT

"An accessible yet deep exploration into the complexity of power, as well as guide to group exercises for unleashing our collective power."― PENN LOH, Senior Lecturer and Director of Community Practice, Tufts University

ALL SOCIAL RELATIONS are laden with power. Getting out from under dominant power relations and mastering power dynamics is perhaps the most essential skill for change agents across all sectors seeking to ignite positive change in the world. This concise action manual explores major concepts of power, with a focus on the dynamics of domination and liberation, and presents methods for shifting power relations and enacting freedom. The Power Manual:

• Clearly distills the major theories of power from post-modern and feminist theory to business management and developmental psychology, and beyond
• Examines key ways that power is deployed and transformed in society
• Presents a new theory of power based on enactment ― the bringing of something to life through one’s actions
• Explains how to refuse powerless identities and enact powerful ones
• Helps readers choose egalitarian interactions over domination
• Demonstrates mastering the process of power expansion
• Features workshop games and group activities for identifying and shifting power relations.

This accessible action manual is ideal for change agents, leaders, and activists across all nonprofit and business sectors aiming to understand, master, and shift power relations.

"Think you know all about power? Think again! …Gives practical guidance for cultivating individual consciousness and building social power."― CYNTHIA SILVA PARKER, Senior Associate, Interaction Institute for Social Change

CYNDI SUAREZ works with leaders in nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and social movements, including most recently the Movement for Black Lives and Dreamers. She has an MS in Nonprofit Management from Southern New Hampshire University, and studied Feminist Theory at the New School for Social Research. Suarez is Senior Editor at Nonprofit Quarterly, the leading nonprofit journal. She lives in Boston, MA.

Aus dem Klappentext

Liberate yourself by understanding and mastering power dynamics

"A comprehensive operations manual for...quite literally enacting our way to freedom."-- GIBRAN RIVERA, Master Facilitator

"This book is masterful. ...The handbook every person who considers themselves working to bring about a more just and compassionate world should read and carry with them throughout their journey."-- CEASAR McDOWELL, Professor of the Practice of Civic Design, MIT

"An accessible yet deep exploration into the complexity of power, as well as guide to group exercises for unleashing our collective power."-- PENN LOH, Senior Lecturer and Director of Community Practice, Tufts University

ALL SOCIAL RELATIONS are laden with power. Getting out from under dominant power relations and mastering power dynamics is perhaps the most essential skill for change agents across all sectors seeking to ignite positive change in the world. This concise action manual explores major concepts of power, with a focus on the dynamics of domination and liberation, and presents methods for shifting power relations and enacting freedom. The Power Manual

• Clearly distills the major theories of power from post-modern and feminist theory to business management and developmental psychology, and beyond
• Examines key ways that power is deployed and transformed in society
• Presents a new theory of power based on enactment -- the bringing of something to life through one's actions
• Explains how to refuse powerless identities and enact powerful ones
• Helps readers choose egalitarian interactions over domination
• Demonstrates mastering the process of power expansion
• Features workshop games and group activities for identifying and shifting power relations.

This accessible action manual is ideal for change agents, leaders, and activists across all nonprofit and business sectors aiming to understand, master, and shift power relations.

"Think you know all about power? Think again! ...Gives practical guidance for cultivating individual consciousness and building social power."-- CYNTHIA SILVA PARKER, Senior Associate, Interaction Institute for Social Change

CYNDI SUAREZ works with leaders in nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and social movements, including most recently the Movement for Black Lives and Dreamers. She has an MS in Nonprofit Management from Southern New Hampshire University, and studied Feminist Theory at the New School for Social Research. Suarez is Senior Editor at Nonprofit Quarterly, the leading nonprofit journal. She lives in Boston, MA.

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Effective Interactions

Supremacist Power and Liberatory Power

Max was one of the first black students admitted into elite private schools on the east coast of the United States. While his parents sent him to these schools to receive a quality education, to make it through Max also learned to navigate difficult, social dynamics. He recalls that when he was in eighth grade, there was a white kid who was always making fun of him. As one of the few black kids, Max had been picked on a lot. "A black kid is someone who is clearly different on the outside," Max said. Eventually, Max decided he wasn't going to give this kid any more attention. This annoyed the kid, who tried different ways to regain the upper hand. He eventually began to be nice to Max, in hopes of getting his attention again, to no avail. Their peers noticed this shift in attention-of power-and the kid lost their esteem. Max was learning how to perceive and shift power dynamics.

We all want power. The power to attract the love we want. The power to create what we want to see in the world. The power to avoid harm. But what is power? And how does one obtain power, especially if one is defined as powerless by society, as black people are?

Power is, first of all, relational. It operates in relationships of inequality where we seek advantage and so is intentional. On the other hand, we are lessened by the inability to assert equality of right and opportunity in an interaction. Power is not about the rule of law, institutions, society, or the state. These are simply the dead forms, or artifacts, that result from past power laden interactions, or confrontations.

Power is exercised, not acquired. Everyday interactions contain aims and objectives that make the exercise of power visible and understandable. Power is also never absolute. There is always resistance. Power is a force field of relationships based on inequality.

Often times leaders or change activists think that if they create and implement new structures, they can shift the way people in an organization interact. Focusing instead on creating collective understanding of how people are currently interacting and their desired ways of interacting can lead to exponential and immediate change.

For example, Otto Scharmer and Ursula Versteegen worked with a network of physicians in an area of Frankfurt, Germany to improve emergency care service. They began by conducting over 100 interviews with both patients and physicians. They then invited the people interviewed to share the results. Almost 100 attended.

The interviews revealed four different levels at which patients and physicians could relate. The first level was transactional. The patient comes in with a problem and the physician fixes it. It is like a machine with a broken part that a mechanic repairs. The second level was behavioral. Here the physician tells the patient the behavior he has to change, and the patient tries to change it. In the third, the assumptive, the physician helps the patient understand the assumptions that underlie the behavior to be changed, and the patient works to question and change the assumption. In the fourth, the identity level, the physician helps the patient understand how the illness may indicate a need to let go of an old identity and explore a new one.

Meeting participants then broke into small groups and talked about what the levels meant to them. They then identified the level(s) that they were currently functioning within and the one(s) they desired. The final tally revealed that both patients and physicians felt they were functioning at levels one and two, and both wanted to function at three and four. They realized that they wanted the same thing and that the system was them, what they chose to enact. With this new awareness, participants spoke about how this was true in their own work and thought of ways they could behave differently. Participants began to share ideas and went on