There are many good people in this world that don’t understand the power they possess. Because of that, they at times accidentally turn into, well, let’s say “difficult to have around”.
Why?
Being a good person and being afraid of power or responsibility at the same time can easily make you not want to use and such neglect or ignore that power. But there is a twist: real power is something you don’t even control. It’s not a choice. It’s related to your presence. Either you have it, or, you don’t.
If you have power in your presence, you’re responsible for it none-the-less, even if you don’t want to yield it (or think you don’t want to). Cause it inevitably works its magic, with or without your conscious doing.
A simplified example are teachers at school. Some can easily silence the whole class when others (even with more knowledge of the subject and still liked by the students) struggle to do the same.
Nobody can know for sure how much he or she influences others and there is no genuine scientific way to measure it. The reality is that other people perceive your power differently as you do. Have you noticed when people sometimes become very quiet or even intimidated when you say something? Or that they become nervous and agressive? There need not even be much said, sometimes a single word is enough.
Sure, it matters which word it is, the meaning it contains and so on, but often it simply depends who says it, when, and how. So ultimately, it’s the presence of the person that creates the force which is submitted through the words and sometimes just a glance from another person is enough to achieve the same.
In business as in life, it’s important to understand this, especially when you’re leading people. If you think of yourself as a good person and have observed others going quiet or nervous when you say something or look in a particular way, please give this some thought.
The influence we may unknowningly have on others, thus encouraging or discouraging them with apparently simple means can cause a lot of good or damage.
So instead of fearing power, let’s understand the presence that surrounds us at times and the effects it has on others. That’s the minimum we can do if we want to keep thinking of ourselves as being a good people.
By understanding our own power and acknowledging it properly, we’ll then naturally and without fear develop the responsibility that leads to a conscious use of that force, rather than an unvoluntarily one, and thus turn into better human beings.