Hamburg The structure of the psychological laboratory experiment is simple. Participants are asked to write about a moment when they either felt powerful or powerless.
The problem with this is that the paper is constantly in danger of fluttering away because a powerful fan is blowing wind across the table. Those recalling a moment of power are significantly more likely to get up and turn off the fan than those reflecting on their powerlessness.
The experiment is intended to prove one of the central theses in the book by the two professors Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro – power begins in the mind: “People who feel powerful tend to change something about the status quo in order to increase their well-being. On the other hand, if you feel powerless, you don’t even get that idea.
If that sounds too much like a motivational seminar, where structure salespeople walk over glowing coals and shout “Tschacka!” power is gained and exercised in politics, business and society.
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Battilana teaches organizational behavior at Harvard, Casciaro at the University of Toronto. The two define power “as the ability to influence the behavior of another group, whether by persuasion or coercion”.
According to the authors, power is always based on access to resources that others value and that can be granted or withdrawn from them. These resources revolve around the two basic human needs of security and self-esteem, to put it bluntly: we want to live well and like ourselves at the same time.
Julie Battilana, Tiziana Casciaro: Power for All
Ariston Publishers
Munich 2022
336 pages
24 euros
Translation: Heike Schlatterer
And this is where belief in power comes into play. Only those who believe in principle that they are capable of exercising power can recognize the resources that are available to them to do so.
“How dare you?” as an instrument of power
In the case of a police officer or supervisor, the resource is clear: it resides in the right to enforce orders by force if necessary (in the case of the officer), or in the ability to give or refuse praise and promotions – or even fire someone and give them that to deprive of material security (at the superior).
But by no means all power resources are so obvious. The authors go into detail about the example of the climate protection movement “Fridays for Future”, which has made a significant contribution in recent years to the fact that the climate protection plans of the industrialized nations have become more ambitious.
At first glance, the activists of this movement, above all the Swede Greta Thunberg, do not have any means of power. As underage students, most of them are not even allowed to vote.
However, the authors analyze that the teenagers actually had a very effective instrument of power at their disposal: the possibility of withdrawing the appreciation from their parents’ generation. Being branded by one’s own offspring as an egotist who is oblivious to the future and who ruins the children’s life chances for the sake of one’s own comfort severely violates the need for self-esteem.
Occupy Wall Street was the largest protest movement in North America as of 2011. The protest expressed criticism of the financial system and social inequality in the world.
(Photo: dpa)
This means of power is expressed in Thunberg’s famous statement “How dare you?”, directed at the parents’ generation, as well as in the term “flight shame”, which was only coined in the course of Fridays for Future.
Other social movements have not been nearly as successful. The capitalism-critical movement “Occupy Wall Street”, for example, was very popular after the global financial crisis, but has now almost disappeared without having really changed capitalism.
The three most important characteristics of social movements
The book argues that among young climate protectors, three important factors have come together that are necessary to give a social movement real clout: First, activism – in the form of the hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren worldwide who demonstrated on Fridays for climate protection (although it The fact that one could usually skip school for this without sanctions may have contributed to the activation).
Second, innovation – unlike Occupy Wall Street, Fridays for Future has made concrete, coherent proposals on how more climate protection can be implemented technically and politically.
Thirdly, orchestration – the young climate protectors were able to connect with other social groups, including parties and large companies, and consciously sought dialogue with them. The fact that the German climate activist Luisa Neubauer met with the then Siemens boss Joe Kaeser in 2020 is an example of this orchestration.
The book is full of examples of how supposedly powerless social groups have gained power and implemented changes for the better. Once the reader has understood the principle, it becomes a bit tiring.
As if the authors had to prove again and again that they definitely didn’t want to deliver a new edition of the classic “The Prince”. In this breviary for rulers from the 16th century, Niccolò Machiavelli gives advice on maintaining political power, some of which are still valid today – even if no clever politician acknowledges them.
However, Battilana and Casciaro also maintain a refreshingly unaffected view of power and invite their readers: “Before you can build your own power base, you need to know who is in power and why.”
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In the workplace or in politics, it is therefore particularly important to recognize who is receptive to which resources, who craves praise, titles, money, autonomy. The real key to exercising power is to lure every person with resources that are irresistible to them – in modern companies this is called “incentivization”.
But even those who have no interest in increasing their own power will benefit from reading “Power for All”. Because the book also analyzes how to free yourself from supposed powerlessness. For example, by reducing your desire for the resources used to exercise power.
For example, the employee can learn to do without the praise of the manipulative manager – and thus break some of the power that manager has over him. Which brings us back to the opening example with the fan, where power begins with overcoming the feeling of powerlessness.
This power of consciousness has a downside: Using numerous examples and psychological experiments, the authors show that the consciousness of having power easily tempts to misuse it – and the stronger the longer and more uncontrolled one exercises this power. “When powerful people act, they view their actions as legitimate, even if they are unethical or illegal. They convince themselves that they have earned their position – even if the reality is different.”
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