Why Women Feel Weird About Power

Kristen: Today we’re talking, fittingly, about power. It’s even in our name, but most women feel weird about wanting power. And I think it’s that word. Want is really specific. We feel really uncomfortable with claiming, with wanting power and ambition and these intangible concepts of, well, I suppose power, really.

This all came about with a chat with Julia Benini. She’s a Brazilian who lives in Spain, doing incredible work with women in all sorts of arenas. Things like trying to get more women into fellowships and doctorates and PhDs, and really challenging the gender status quo and getting more women into those arenas.

And she talked a lot about how women feel uncomfortable with power. So we self-sabotage, which brought all of these thoughts out, and we had a quick chat about it today. So that’s what we’re chatting about. I did not want to claim these were my ideas or that I came up with them. It’s come out of conversation with her. I’m going to pop her website in. But I just thought, let’s explore that idea of a messy relationship with women and power.

Nat: Can we start by defining it? And maybe we both have a different definition, because while you were introducing this I was thinking, what is power? I’m curious to know what you would define, because I think ambition and power are slightly separate, and I have a theory on why we do not like power. But yeah, what does power mean to you? If you were to define it.

Kristen: OK, great. First of all, I think you’re absolutely right. Now that I think about it, ambition is the desire to have power and be more powerful. So I would like to claim that ambition is a key ingredient to having power. And when I think about power, the first word that comes to mind is influence. So influencing decisions, those around us, those above us – and I’m thinking in a hierarchical sense in an organisation – those below us. But I think of power as influence, personally.

Nat: I think influence is probably a good word for it. I’m not sure if I think ambition is to get more power. Ambition for me has always been that I’ll have a goal I’m working towards and I have ambition to achieve that goal. And it may not be power, it could be making a change to the world or whatever.

But I do think influence is the word that we’re going to get stuck on. Because what I actually interpret power as, if I think about my really first reaction, is almost to have control. Influence feels like a positive word, and when I think about power and those who I’ve seen in powerful positions, it’s more like sway, or control, or the bad connotations of influence. I think ambition is wanting something, yes, but not necessarily power. I think we’re in pursuit.

Kristen: OK, so – oh my gosh, this is going to be a complex one. And please, everyone, as you’re thinking, reflect with us. What does it mean to you? Because we’re literally trying to dig into this.

So, we talked about this a lot when we started Powrsuit. We were asking, are we for ambitious women? Those that want to invest in themselves and take a next step and expand their capabilities? But then we certainly couldn’t use the word ambitious, because women would say, well, am I ambitious? I’m not ambitious. I just came off a call with someone who literally wants to expand their skill set in their current role, and they said, I lack ambition. And I thought, is that right? Maybe. I don’t know.

It’s so loaded. But I feel like ambition is wanting more than what we have today, whatever that context is. So it is a want, a desire for a goal, an objective, overcoming something, working towards something.

But power – I think your definition is very similar to mine. Influence and sway go hand in hand. I think those lead to control. You have more control over your life, your choices, the environment around you. If I rocked in and wanted the culture of a place to change, having the power to do so would mean I’m now more in control of my environment, because it’s a better place for me to navigate in.

Nat: Can I ask a follow-up question then? Do you think power needs to be – and I’m asking myself this too – when we hear the word power, and when you talk about women feeling weird about wanting power, do you associate that with an official job title? So we don’t want roles that have power associated with them. Is that it? Or do you think power, in this context, is also something we think you just have or don’t have, and it’s something you can develop regardless of job title or role or whatever?

Kristen: Personally, I would go regardless of job title, because I know moments where I feel powerful and I still keep coming back to influence. I feel really powerful when you and I are in front of a room and we’re storytelling and we’re getting a point across, and you see all these eyeballs and people clicking, aha moments, people nodding.

I feel powerful in that moment. Not from a weird, I own you, I have dominion over you place. It’s not that. But I have sway and influence in that moment to change someone’s mindset or the trajectory of their life. That is powerful. And maybe this podcast for that very reason. I feel powerful because we have a voice now.

I also think that’s regardless of hierarchy. Who cares about our titles to do that? But equally, you can be a CEO and be incredibly powerless, because you can have a board that doesn’t give you the power to influence, or have sway, or change your environment.

Nat: The reason I was asking those questions is that I’ve got two analogies. I don’t think you and I have a problem with power. I think we’re comfortable saying we want to be more powerful, right? Because both of us have had the absolute privilege of spending the last couple of years working on Powrsuit and really analysing all of these stories we tell ourselves, these labels, these misconceptions. Words like power, where we think there’s one definition but there are actually 50.

I saw a video – I should post it, I think I’ve talked about it before – someone did on what is a chair. A chair feels really obvious, but they went for 10 minutes with a room full of people and by the end realised all our perceptions of the definition of a chair are quite different once you get into the nitty gritty. Their purpose was to talk about why we have so many stories we tell ourselves about much more complicated ideas.

So with power, I think we’ve both spent a lot of time analysing it and probably have a much more positive perception, which is why you articulate our perception of it. And that sense of control, that negative vibe, is maybe the other way of defining it.

The first example, and I jotted a note down in our pod notes, is Singapore. Singapore to me has been such an eye-opener, because we’ve been raised in democracies where there’s this western – I’m going to say propaganda, because it really opened my eyes – that democracy is the be-all and end-all. Democracy means freedom, everyone gets a say, we’re all equal, all of this great stuff.

And then I went to Singapore and saw a quite different political system. I don’t even know what the label for that political system is, but Lee Kuan Yew, who is globally credited for transforming Singapore from a developing country effectively into a global superpower in about 60 years, a tiny fraction of time, would be a very powerful person. And when we look at people in his role – and they’ve had the same party in power for a very long time – all of those traditional cues to what that would look like. Being controlling, being autocratic. Maybe you could throw the word dictatorship around if you wanted to. We have such strong ideas about what they look like.

And then you go to Singapore and you see almost utopia. This idea of people who use power for good, and their whole perception of why they want these roles, and why this long-term government is in place, is to think long term, think 1,000 years, and think about how to improve the lives of everyone. It struck me when I was there. Wow, we have such inbuilt biases around what those roles and what power can look like in those roles. Does that make sense? It was really mind-blowing to me how biased my view was.

Kristen: Yeah. What I’m hearing is that we’ve been role-modelled, and worked in, systems and structures where there was a single type of power, and that was the power to attain. Especially growing up with parents who went through the Cold War, where there was good and bad, communism and democracies, and so on. That’s interesting. That is a form of power, right and wrong, which would have come down.

But equally, there have been really negative role models of power. We’re seeing it now with the billionaires who are incredibly powerful, running what people are calling conflict platforms now, no longer social media platforms. People in incredibly powerful positions, not necessarily using their power for good.

So to bring it full circle, that’s why we actually need more women in positions of power and influence. Because they have shown, as CEOs and at any table – and let’s not talk hierarchy, any voice – that we bring our influence and our perspective, and quite often we bring that lens for good, for longer term, for sustainable, for communities, for our customers, so on and so forth. Not to be trophy about it, but that is shown in research.

Nat: I agree. And that’s why I wanted to use Singapore as an example, because my gut feeling about the word power, around control, around trying to get people to do what I want, is built by what we see. In my experience up until Singapore, it was: if you were someone who had maintained a political position for a very long time, or your party had, you’re effectively a dictator. It was terrible and bad, and absolute power corrupts, and all of that.

And then going and seeing, oh wow, all of those things can also be true for someone, or a group of people, applying a totally different view on what the role of power is. And that is for greater good and community.

I just thought, that’s probably why we have a weird relationship with power. Because when I look at how – like you say, social media – anyone who accumulates power in my world, apart from very few exceptions, it corrupts them. They become corrupted, because it’s about maintaining that power and building it and getting more of what I want out of it. And I just realised we don’t have many role models of people who use power for good. We just don’t. And that’s made us feel really uncomfortable with the idea.

Kristen: Yeah, and I’d say nothing’s changed. It’s few. Even now, opening the news every day and seeing these incredibly powerful people in positions where they can influence legislation and laws and how we navigate this world, particularly as women. It’s kind of a scary place to be.

Julia Benini – just checking her last name – Julia Benini talked about a framework she works a lot with, which is Cedar Barstow’s right use of power framework. I’m going to quickly research who that is. It sets out three types of power.

The first is role power. Your position, and the roles we have, no matter what level they are in an organisation, give us legitimate power to influence decisions. People do naturally come to us for input, for approval, for insights, at every level. We don’t have to wait for permission. Our role, at any level, gives us that legitimate power. So there is role power, and we do not have to sit at the top of the organisation to have it.

There’s personal power, which is our expertise, our credibility, and how people respond to us, how they seek us out for our perspective. You’ll have a lot of people saying, hey Nat, can I pick your brain for 10 minutes? Or, I’ve got a challenge and I know you can help me work through it. Or, I’d love your perspective on this project, or this approach we’re taking.

Then, of course, there’s status power, which is your relationships, your networks and your personal brand.

So what Cedar Barstow says is that we all have power now, based on our role power, our personal power and our status power. This isn’t something we’re working towards, and it isn’t something we need to ask permission to have. This is something we all have right now. That’s a big mindset shift that Julia Benini works with a lot of people on. You do not need to be anyone else, or have more skills, or be a totally different person, or have that role, or have your life look like this. You have power right now.

Nat: I really like this, because any time we have a three-pronged framework, we sometimes focus on one and not the others. And while I recognise that it doesn’t matter what your role is, you can have power, that’s actually the lever that is least in our control. If you’re in an entry-level grad position, your role will give you very little power comparatively.

So I wonder if that’s what we’ve all trained ourselves to do. Only think about the formal power, the power that’s given to us through position. And if we don’t feel like we have that, then we’re powerless.

What I like about the other two is that they’re completely in our control. You can build expertise, you can build credibility, you can learn, you can upskill, you can become an expert on whatever you want. That gives you more personal power regardless of job title. Same with status. Building relationships, building networks, becoming known for something, building social capital. Again, completely in our control.

And I wonder if, going back to the definition of power we started with and that idea of it being about controlling things or influencing things, we just focus on that top one and go, well, if I’m not in the top job, I don’t have power.

Kristen: Yeah. And I like the example of a Powrsuiter who was not – OK, I’m going to simplify the way I describe this. They were not what you’d typically assume to be a position of power in their organisation. It was a huge organisation going through a lot of change, and many people going through that change felt incredibly powerless and therefore checked out. Felt they didn’t have a voice, felt they couldn’t influence, so they checked out. They were basically saying, I have no role power, I’m a victim of my circumstance.

This person, who I won’t name but I think you’ll get who it is, said: I’m going to take back my role power. I may not be managing a team of 10, or have a fancy title, or whatever, but I’m going to start putting Powrsuit newsletters and ideas into our organisation’s newsletter. I’m going to bring Powrsuit into this organisation to get everyone taking back control and responsibility and professional development and all of this. And I’m going to advocate for others. And I’m going to be a part of this change at this organisation and take an active role.

That’s a really great example of role power. They had legitimate power to influence their organisation at their level in a massive organisation.

Nat: Do you think so? I would have put that down to personal and status power. That wasn’t their job. That was the power they chose to use through influence, through relationships, through social capital, through building credibility. They didn’t need to rely on their role for that.

Kristen: I think it wasn’t relying on role. What I’m trying to debunk is the idea that you need the role. They had huge influence in their role at their organisation, and people responded to that.

Nat: I do wonder if – to me, the thing is we focus on the role, and if the role doesn’t explicitly give us that power, then we don’t think we have it. Whereas what I think they did was go, I don’t care what my role power gives me. I can create power through these other levers, through my personal expertise and through my relationships and networks.

So role power is at maximum a third of the power you ever have. And fine, you don’t have that. Great. I’m not the person in charge of what programme rolls out at this organisation. I can influence through my other levers of power.

Kristen: Yeah, great. I love that view. It’s the three-legged stool.

The only hair I’m going to split is that they literally had power. Say we build no more role power. Say I build no more personal power, I do no more development this year. Say I build no more relationships or networks this year. I still have role power. I still have personal power. I still have status power. I can do nothing and I still have power. That’s the hair I’m going to split. I still have power.

People in my graduate role will still come to me to involve me in a decision. They’ll still come to me for insights. They’ll still come to me for perspectives on my own tiny little spreadsheet. But I have power in that.

Nat: Yeah, yeah.

Kristen: Same thing with personal power. The credibility I bring today. I don’t need anything else, because I’ve done my study, I’ve found my feet, I have a totally different lived experience to you. So I’ve got personal power, and I’ve got status power because of my existing networks. I have power, and I can sit in that power.

Nat: I completely agree. And what we’re getting to is that we have a warped perception of power, which probably comes from all of these power-hungry egomaniacs who are in it for themselves. Those are often the role models we see. That, or people who are run ragged looking after everyone else and having to take on a lot more responsibility. Neither of those looks attractive to a lot of people.

However, we can reframe that and recognise that all of us already have power, and you have three prongs to your stool. At any stage, even if one of them is limited – and I think your role is often the most limited one, because it’s power gifted to you according to your position – the other two are power you can build all the time, at any stage, that no one else has any say over. I love that.

I also think about the flip side of role power. I don’t know who’s listening, but the only thing I can tell you is I’ve known enough people in high role power positions where I’d say almost all their power comes from their role. They haven’t invested time in status. They haven’t built great relationships. They haven’t respected other people. They’ve thrown their power around. They haven’t invested in their networks as a human. They’ve only really relied on their role. They haven’t built credibility. They don’t even necessarily have the expertise.

And when those people lose those roles, their entire ability to influence crumbles with the role. Whereas I’ve seen other people use all three prongs, and it doesn’t matter what role they’re in, they’re still very powerful.

That’s another lesson we should all take away. If you’re thinking role power is the be-all and end-all, you’ve got it on its head. That’s the easiest one to get and lose, and it’s not in your control as much as the other two are.

Kristen: Yeah, I love that. OK, so looking at Cedar Barstow. Cedar Barstow is a psychotherapist, international trainer and ethics consultant, working on increasing ethical awareness, compassion, wisdom and skill. She’s written a book called The Right Use of Power. It’d be interesting to read her take on these three prongs. But I quite like how we’ve brought it home into practical terms in our own lives.

I’ve shared that info if anyone wants to go deep and dive more into where this whole three types of power idea came from. I think we’ve done it justice. I think we’ve gone well. We’ve given ourselves an A+. And I think we’ve probably got to jump off.

Nat: I also feel like this is something we were discussing beforehand, and I think it’s important to bring wealth into this. We’ve spent what, five or six years digging into wealth and why women resist wealth, which we really do.

If you think about your gut reaction to those two words, power and wealth, and if either of your reactions is negative, that’s probably an indication that there’s a whole bunch of stories and biases and role models and conditioning that have shaped your views on those words. And there is no fixed definition that we all subscribe to. So maybe it’s worth investigating your own beliefs about them, and thinking about how you might be able to turn them into a positive for you. Or even just examine those negative biases.

Because if that’s what’s stopping you moving into positions where you have wealth and power, that’s a real shame. Like you said at the start, what a shame to not have more people on the team of good in those positions, who have the money and the power to use to make the world better. And that is exactly what we’d like to achieve. Powrsuit is for other people to see themselves in those roles and in those places, and use it for good.

Kristen: That’s a lovely summary. When I was first chatting with her, I said, if you were to share one thing that could be the unlock for women getting into all these amazing graduate programmes, in these arenas that are full of men, what would that be? And she said immediately, self-sabotage, lack of confidence. And it all came down to our relationship with power.

So you’ve effectively just said we can get in our own way. We’ve done a couple of podcasts on that. Are we getting in our own way of all sorts of things, of moving towards positions of power and wealth, and power in that sense of the three-legged stool? I think that’s a really nice balance of it.

I just felt it was neat to explore that. Hopefully everyone followed along our journey and got some food for thought. Our goal is to create conversation around what could be unlocks for us to move into arenas where not only do we feel more fulfilled and well, but equally the world is a better place, our workplaces are better places.

Nat: And I think the other test is people, because it’s something we used to get told all the time around wealth. I don’t care about money. So if you find yourself saying, I don’t care about money and I don’t care about power, please double down on this reflection. Because I guarantee, people who claim not to care about money or power wind up being the people who spend the most time being impacted by it and thinking about it. Having power and having money gives you the freedom to not worry so much about being powerless and moneyless.

So if you have that self-limiting belief that you don’t care about them, challenge yourself to re-examine what those labels mean, how you might use them for good, and why you feel really uncomfortable with both of them. We’ve had the privilege of a couple of years, well, the last decade of our lives, devoted to why we feel uncomfortable with a lot of them. And it’s amazing what you can come up with when you start to think, wow, I have some weird conditioning around this. It’s just an assumption, almost, around what they mean. And it doesn’t have to be true.

Kristen: Yep, well said. Everyone, check out powrsuit.com, share this episode, and come and join us. We’ll use our – what is it, what power are we using? Status power. We’ll use our status and personal power to ask people to share.

Nat: It’s true though. If you think we’re credible and you want to be friends with us, you have to share the podcast.

Kristen: Yes. Thank you everyone. Thanks for using your power through our power, and we’ll catch you all next time. Bye.