Tools to analyze power and leadership

A few weeks ago, I was delighted to find in my office the Fall 2004 issue of Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology, which focuses on power and leadership. I was delighted because the editors and publishers of Vision (Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and Canadian Mennonite University) and the writers who contributed to this issue were willing to tackle a subject that has been much marginalized, maligned and misunderstood in Mennonite circles.

I am currently taking a course entitled "Organizational power and politics" through the Faculty of Management at the University of Manitoba. I have found the conversations about power with my instructor and fellow students, who are managers in a wide variety of businesses and non-profit organizations, the most refreshing and freeing that I have ever had.

Our instructor has given us tools to name and analyze our personal sources of power and the areas in which we need to develop it. She has also given us tools to analyze the ethics and effectiveness of our use of power.

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While some might suspect that so much talk about power and how to use it would be a sure path to corruption, I have found exactly the opposite to be true. Receiving practical tools for naming and understanding power has greatly helped me to de-mystify and disempower power itself. And naming and understanding power within the context of a discerning community--my fellow students--pushes me to think about sharing power and being held accountable for its use--or abuse--or, perhaps more common in Mennonite circles, the failure to use it.

The humour, insight and high standards that my fellow students have applied to demanding ethical questions about power are an example to me of what can and should happen when we learn how to talk about power and when we know it's "okay" to do it.

I hope that the Fall 2004 issue of Vision will inspire a new and positive interest in questions of power and leadership in Mennonite circles, and new efforts to help church leaders and members understand power well and use it responsibly.