Personal Power and How to Keep it

Personal Power and How to keep it 

Interestingly and sadly, we give others command and control over us without even knowing we are! We give them power over us.

 How does that happen, I hear you ask?

Influence is powerful and can be insidious. I see and hear every day that individuals give their personal power away to others and do not even know they are doing it.

The thing that prompted this particular musing was: that I was listening to 2 people talk the other day on an open-voice platform. Person 1 asked person 2 a question, and person 2 then asked person 1 if it was ok to share their answer!

My head was like, WTH! Why have you given up your power to answer a question you have just been asked, and you had to ask a question to give you permission to answer. Now I know both individuals slightly, and I understand why and was surprised.

Surely, we are in charge of what we do and how we allow others to influence us?

The simple answer is that for many of you, most of the time, the answer is NO

AND for some of you, some of the time the answer is NO

AND for some of you some of the time the answer is YES, you are in charge

OR for some of you, all of the time, the answer is YES, you are in charge

You do not give away your personal power unless you consciously choose to

It is a choice we make very often completely unconsciously and without connecting either through thought or intuition

SO how does that happen? Surely, we can all do that? Well, the answer is yes, we can, so why don’t we?

Some of the reasons this happens are:

1. Lack of self-confidence
2. Lack of ability to communicate
3. Need for validation or approval from others
4. Misplaced trust or belief in authority figures
5. Difficulty setting and enforcing personal boundaries
6. The desire to fit in or be accepted
7. Not wanting to put your head over the ‘parapet’.
8. Fear of rejection or abandonment
9. Childhood conditioning or past traumas
10. Co-dependency or enabling behaviour

The IMPORTANT thing to remember is that you can be whomever you want to be with belief & change & your past does not dictate your future when you engage in change.

Now something else happens, especially when we have employed a Mentor or we have someone higher in the hierarchy, or we admire someone for a particular skill.

We put people on a pedestal – now:

• They may like that or not
• They may welcome it or not
• They may demand it or not 

AND when we, you, I do this, it reduces your, our, my power base, which of course, is reflected in our behaviour. It can also become a bit like they become your puppet master!

When an individual is put on a pedestal, whether they want to be there or not, it can affect power dynamics in the following ways:

1. Gives the person on the pedestal an unwarranted sense of authority or superiority.
2. Creates an imbalanced power dynamic, with the person on the pedestal having more control and influence.
3. Causes the person doing the pedestalling to surrender their personal power and agency.
4. Can lead to disappointment and disillusionment when the person on the pedestal fails to live up to expectations.
5. Can create an unhealthy dynamic where the person on the pedestal is unable to receive constructive criticism or feedback.

SO how do we stop it from happening & I write this knowing I have done it a lot in the distant past and still now, on occasions, find for some bizarre reason it is happening again, and I correct it very quickly.

I also want you to hear that this has nothing to do with the respect we show to others. That is a completely different subject. 

Now I have, over decades, learnt this ‘stuff’. Being a Management & Leadership Consultant, I have had to learn how to stand up for myself and challenge others respectively when the need arises.

Being in Management and Leadership positions in Business I had to step up to the mark otherwise me and my team & Business would have, could have suffered.

I have also requested to be investigated twice by the partnership I was in, as I thought I may have overstepped the mark with clients. I hadn’t either time, and it has been a learning process over the years, even before I knew what it was I was doing. There is a lot more to this story which I will share later.

As an employee:

Standing up to a senior manager in the middle of an open plan office and not stepping back when he invaded my personal space and I repeated my no, that isn’t going to happen. Clearly, more to the story, as there always is.

Asking 23 individuals, that I worked with in a small London firm, individually who it was that had complained about me to my line manager (decades ago) & they all said not me. Someone talked about me behind my back and then couldn’t/wouldn’t say it to my face. Even at an early age I knew that wasn’t the environment for me to work in.

This one story tells you so much about people and is one of the reasons I am so passionate about Transparency and culture in the workplace.

Without much detail as such here are some steps to help you learn not to give away your personal power:

1. Practice self-awareness: Identify your triggers and patterns that lead to you giving away your power.
2. Build self-confidence: Focus on your strengths and accomplishments and recognise your worth.
3. Set clear boundaries: Learn to say “no” to people and situations that drain your energy.
4. Keep your values strong: First, you need to elicit what your values are. 
5. Develop assertiveness skills: Speak up for yourself and express your needs and opinions in a clear and respectful manner.
6. Practice self-care: Take care of your physical, emotional, and mental well-being to feel empowered and grounded.
7. Seek support: Surround yourself with people who support and respect you. 
8. Seek professional help if necessary: coaching, mentoring, training or therapy intervention. 
9. Challenge limiting beliefs: Examine and reframe any negative thought patterns that contribute to you giving away your power.
10. Cultivate independence: Develop a sense of self-reliance and work on becoming less reliant on the approval or validation of others.

Now I know some of these may have you saying to yourself, ‘how on earth can I do that?’ well, please believe me, you can with learning and practice.

You can learn to maintain your own personal power in any situation you are in, and the more you do, the easier it becomes.

HONEST

And genuinely, if I, who used to hide behind my Mothers’ skirts and not say a word for many a year, can

SO CAN YOU.

If you want to know more, reach out, I can support & challenge you with learning and change.

There are many episodes, over 190, on alternate subjects on my Conscious Leadership Podcast follow the link, choose your platform, subscribe and listen in & of course if you would like to leave a review please do