Preschool is a playground for learning about power. The definition of power is “the ability to have an effect or to have influence.”  The dynamics of power, of course, also include responding to other’s ability to have an effect on you.   Recently, my four-year-old goddaughter gave me some insight into how she was working this out. Here’s how it went.

“Cedar, let’s make an igloo!”

“Okay. How will we do that?” (With blankets over the couch and pillows as the block ice walls, we made an igloo with a door that could be flipped open. We then nestled ourselves inside with a few books and a little drum. Rose then knocked her hand on the pillow wall.)

“I hear something. (knocks again). I hear something. Do you? What is it?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“It’s wolves.”

“Wolves. What do you think we should do?”

“Quick. Play the drum. That will keep them away.” She plays the drum, chanting, “No, no you can’t come in.”

“How is it working?”

“The wolf went away.” (knock knock) “It came back.”

Again, drumming, “No, no, you can’t come in!” (We repeat this process five or six times,then…..)

“Rose, how do you know if it is a friendly wolf or a mean wolf?” (pause)

“I know by how it knocks. If it knocks two times, it’s a mean wolf and if it knocks three times, it’s a friendly wolf.”

(Knock knock) “So this one’s a mean one.”

“Yes. No, no you can’t come in!”

(knock, knock, knock) “It’s a friendly wolf! Open the door and let him in!” (In a series of door knockings, we let in four friendly wolves and keep away three more mean wolves.)

“Now, let’s give the wolves some hot dogs. Would you put a hot dog on this stick? And we’ll stick it outside for them.” (I carefully put an imaginary hot dog onto the drum stick and Rose sticks it through a crack in the blankets separate from the door.)

“Do they like the hot dogs?”

“Oh yes, they do. When they eat the hot dogs, the mean wolves become friendly.” We thus befriend six more wolves with our hot dogs on a stick and bring them into the igloo.

“Too many wolves in here now. Let’s send them outside. I’m hot now.” (Down comes the igloo and suddenly the game is over.)

What’s my sense of what issues Rose is exploring?  She’s involved in play with many different children. She’s learning that she can make her own choices about who she wants to play with. She’s learning how to discern who is friendly and who is mean by their actions or attitudes. She’s learning that she can have a strong effect….she can actively include and exclude with her voice and her determination. At the most sophisticated level, she seems to be exploring here how to influence mean people to be friendly by offering them a gift of something they like. She’s developing healthy boundaries that can welcome others and also serve as protection when needed.

Preschool is an impressive learning environment. This is a lot for a four-year-old to be trying to understand and cope with. This is an early stage of life-long learning about how to use our power, our ability to have an effect or to have influence, in more and more refined, sensitive, effective and skillful ways. When I shared this story with the women in my Peace Circle, one of them said, “That’s what I need now: a drum and a chant ‘no, no, you can’t come in.’ It’s simple and brilliant. I’m so sloppy with my yes’s and no’s.”

Intention and impact, discernment, good boundaries, power with heart. Rose is making a good beginning. These are such complex and important personal and social issues in the realms of right use of power. I am seeking ways to bring these issues more consciously into the classroom. Becoming more informed about right use of power, as something that needs to be learned, would go a long way toward helping children and then adults lead with their power connected with their heart and focused toward the common good.

A while ago, I had an interchange with someone that got me thinking. It went like this: “I had been mistreated for so long that the good parts and the financial security of the job just finally were outweighed by my loss of self-esteem. So, I rehearsed for weeks how to tell my boss I was leaving in a peaceful, non-blaming way. Just that it was time for me to move on. I went into his office and made my rehearsed statement.”

“What was his response?” I asked.

The woman said,  ”I couldn’t believe it. What a joke! He actually said, ‘Are you unhappy? Is there another place in the company you’d rather be?’”

I replied, “So it seems that you felt his response was just more of the same lack of understanding. Did his question seem real to you?”

“Well, you know, I have to admit, now that I look at it, it did seem real.  But I was so shocked and I had so definitely made up my mind that the only possibility was to leave that I didn’t even take it seriously.”

I took a moment to feel into that surprising moment when her boss asked, “Are you unhappy?” How could it be that he didn’t know that she was unhappy? Of course, I’m not the boss here, but I’d like to make a guess. It comes from understanding a power-differential dynamic that can, if not recognized by the persons in both up-power and down-power positions, create poignant and painful work situations like the one above.

It’s simple. The person with positional power (i.e., the boss, supervisor, therapist, teacher, CEO), whether they own it or not, has the power to dismiss, assess, promote, demote, and assign tasks that the person in the down-power position must follow.   The person in the down-power position, therefore, is at risk of losing job or favor by offering truthful (but critical) feedback. So, down-power employees, like the woman in the story, withhold the truth. The up-power employer or supervisor then only or primarily hears good or neutral feedback, which leads to continued or even increased insensitivity and/or disrespectful or manipulative behaviors.

There are other possible reasons that those in up-power authority positions misuse or abuse their power. To name a few: they are caught in dysfunctional systems that are outside their control, they didn’t get adequate training in how to use their positional power sensitively and skillfully, they think they can get away with it, they over-identify with their up-power role and lose the perspective of the down-power position, or they want so much to be non-hierarchical that they don’t carry out the responsibilities of their role with the strength and direction that is needed.

I want to focus on the feedback dynamic because it is the one we can have most impact with when we are in down-power positions. Most of us, like the woman in the story, think we have to choose between telling the whole truth OR emotional security and peace. And most of us have had experiences in which we told the truth and got hurt. Or we told a truth nobody else was willing to express and became the “lightning rod”-the one who takes the shock for everyone else.   We end up sacrificing ourselves for our principles. Of course, as history shows, this is often the only way.   It’s always good to stand up for what it right and just; however, it’s even better when you can do it skillfully, effectively, and without personal danger.

Shifting from thinking you have to choose between truth and safety is similar to another big shift: from thinking you have to choose between power and heart to understanding that you can link power with heart.   This shift is about using “smart power” as in the article about Hilary Clinton in a recent issue of Time. Smart power in working with those up-power to you is using both compassion and skill to give feedback in ways that will be easier for them to hear. By so doing you’ll create a problem-resolving response instead of a negative or defensive one.

In my Right Use of Power classes we talk about how to be more effective in working with superiors. Here are a few suggestions that have come from real-life experience:

1. offer authentic appreciation;
2. link a complaint with a request for change;
3. ask for a good time to talk;
4. avoid taking something on alone when there is significant risk-join with others;
5. be specific and describe the impact on you or system;
6. name possible solutions and be willing to be part of the solution;
7. try to understand the other’s position even if you don’t agree;
8. focus more on the future than the past;
9. identify possible differences in style;
10.  find where you have leverage;
11. look for what you CAN do instead of what you can’t;
12. change a gripe into a curiosity; and
13. look for the larger perspective.

In a challenging situation, start by finding compassion for everyone concerned. Then think and feel into the likely implications of several choices in order to choose what to try first. For example, what might the woman in this story do? In her shoes, I would try #3, then #1, then #2 (possibly including #5 and #6). Use whatever you try to help discern and refine your next step.   One of the most difficult things, however, is to know when to persist and when to let go. Sometimes progress is so small it’s hard to see. In To Kill a Mockingbird, even lawyer, Atticus Finch’s skill doesn’t save an innocent black man from being convicted of murder. One of the townspeople comments: “It’s Macon, Georgia in 1935 and Atticus actually got that jury deliberatin’ for hours an’ hours. Now that’s somethin’.” Lawyer Finch had to let go without getting the result he wanted.

When I was teaching in Japan, I gave my students these directions: “Stand facing your partner. Now imagine that this partner is in an up-power position and you are having difficulty. Notice your stance, your feelings, your impulses. Name these aloud if you wish: ‘Anger, stiff, tight, throat hurts, want to shake the other person, eyes narrowed.’ Okay, now turn your back to your partner and take three breaths. I want you now to change only one thing. You don’t have to even like this person. Just take on an attitude of curiosity. Now, turn around and face your partner again and notice your responses. Are they different?” The participants were quite amazed. One man said, “The wall I felt between us just disappeared.” Another said, “I shifted from focusing on my partner as tough and mean to seeing him as just another person and the problem was like a ball between us.”

Using our power with wisdom and skill, even when we are in a down-power position, can enable us to tell the truth to a higher-up and still be secure….and often effective.