9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power

Power Tool #1: Know Your History

Know your history and you can create the future of your choice. How many women did you learn about in high school history classes? Bet you can count them on one hand without using all your fingers. Women have been all but written out of history. Yet we are always everywhere giving birth to everyone and doing all kinds of important things despite barriers. Take Sybil Luddington. At age sixteen, on April 26, 1777, Sybil rode through towns in New York and Connecticut warning that the British were coming. She gathered enough volunteers to beat back the British army the next day, and her ride was twice as long as Paul Revere’s. Yet, unless you live in the small Connecticut town named for her, it’s doubtful you’ve ever heard of her. Sometimes she is called the “female Paul Revere” but couldn’t he just as well be called “the male Sybil Luddington?” What women would you like to write into the history books?

Power Tool #2 - Define Your Own Terms

Most high school debaters can tell you that the first person to set the terms of the debate usually wins. That’s because when we allow someone else to define the terms, we allow them to set the framework that constructs our thoughts. Just think about how power has typically been defined, as an oppressive power-over model. If we shift the definition of power to a power-to model, suddenly the discussion is about leadership, and the ability to get things done. Almost anyone can employ power-over, but it takes skill to employ power-to. It takes a skill to lead others rather than to force, require, coerce, or lord over them. Leadership power is much different from the use of force to gain acceptance of a goal. Watch feminist icon Gloria Steinem, CODEPINK founder Jodie Evans, young feminist leader Shelby Knox, El Diario/La Prensa editor-in-chief Erica Gonzalez, and others talking about their power-to moments, both personal and interpersonal. Was there a moment when you knew that you had the power to . . .(you fill in the blank)? What was it? And how did you feel? What did you do? If you didn’t have one moment, was there a process that led you to that awareness? What can you share with other women that might help them on their journey?

Power Tool #3: Use What You’ve Got

To be able to use power, the first thing you’ve got to do is realize that you have it. In your personal life and in meeting challenges at work that what you need is usually there if you can only see it and have the courage to use it. Here are just a few examples women shared about how to use what you’ve got:

• Know Your Value. Honestly assess your talents, skills, experiences, and capacities—how can you best demonstrate your special expertise? Women have clout, clout that we haven’t fully leveraged. Who values you, who wants you on their side, who needs your skills and talents?

• Toot Your Own Horn. If you don’t, who will? And instead of getting stuck in the weeds of self-reproach, ask yourself: What did I do right? What experience did I gain that will improve my abilities and chances next time?

• Give Yourself a Whack on the Head. Don’t miss the obvious. What are you overlooking? What resources and solutions are right in front of you?”

Women collectively need this metaphorical whack to get us out of stale thought patterns and help us realize what incredible power we have at this amazing moment when all signs point to a world that wants the qualities we bring to life and leadership. What keys do you hold in your hand? And how can you use what you’ve got to get what you want–your goals, aspirations, the power to use your gifts?

Power Tool #4 – Embrace Controversy

Controversy. Does it make you run for the hills, or charge into the fray? Controversy means a subject is important enough that people are paying attention to it. It gives you a platform to share your convictions, and it also gives you and others an opportunity to clarify your values. Controversy and the conversations it engenders might cause conflict, but it is also the way change is made. And it can also become a source of strength. To be a beacon of light when so many of our leaders become co-opted rather than stay courageous, and to empower us to take the initiative without delay. What are ways that you have embraced controversy in your life in order to make a positive change?

Power Tool #5 – Carpe the Chaos

It’s our job to find the opportunity–to carpe the chaos. Paradigm shifts and innovation don’t happen in moments of stability. They occur during periods of upheaval, times when the tectonic plates of our lives shift and make things feel chaotic. Wars, revolutions, famine, drought, earthquakes, economic depressions, diseases like HIV/AIDS, social justice movements—these all cause basic social turbulence. Sometimes “normal” patterns are interrupted because of a technological innovation, such as the wheel, the printing press, the automobile, the television, the pill, the cell phone, the Internet, Twitter. As women gain reproductive and economic equality, the changing gender power balance creates substantial chaos. In a good way.Think about when you’ve been in a chaotic situation, in work or in your personal life. Did you retreat, or did you step forward and own it, rewriting the rules and setting new parameters?

Power Tool #6 – Wear the Shirt

A favorite T-shirt expression is, “Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History.” Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s wry observation became one of the guiding principles of the women’s movement during the 1970s. Perhaps because of their delicious candor laced with felicity of expression, these words have become a slogan for boundary-breaking women everywhere. But just because it’s proudly emblazoned on mugs and bumper stickers and, yes, T-shirts, doesn’t mean we should let the message be reduced to merely a personal assertion of gutsiness. The context of Ulrich’s observation, the thing that actually makes it true, is both personal and political. Although history is often taught in schoolbooks as a sequence of significant acts by Important Men (and the occasional important woman), what Ulrich recognized is that making history is a communal act, requiring us to break the boundaries of what is considered proper behavior.“Wear the Shirt” becomes a metaphor, then, for taking a bold stance about your convictions, and not hiding your light under the bushel basket. When you wear the shirt to the grocery store, the gym, or to pick up the mail, you are inviting people to have a conversation with you. What shirt expresses you?

Power Tool #7: Create a Movement

Be a sister, have the courage to talk about the issues that are important, and put sister and courage together to create a movement. Think about it. When you needed to plan Thanksgiving dinner, didn’t you call on your sisters to help you plan the menu and distribute the workload? Those same skills can be incorporated into the workplace and in politics. What is the goal you want to accomplish? What are the various components and tasks? What strengths do the individual members of your team have, and how can those strengths be utilized to pull everything together? Where do you need to create a movement in your life? Have you established support networks? And how can you apply the principles of movement building into your day-to-day life?

Power Tool #8: Employ Every Medium

The media forms us as it informs us. How we learn about people, trends and issues gets filtered through a media lens that still objectifies women and shoehorns complex issues into linear, bifurcated extremes. If we are to lead with intention and live unlimited, we must cut through the media’s false balance and one-size-fits-all framing of issues to deliver our messages clearly and fully and to get information we need from sources we trust. To do this we need to amplify our media voices not only in traditional media, but on the internet and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, texting, pinterest, and many other platforms. Women are 60% of social media users, and that allow us to learn from each other’s experiences and to connect with people professionally, politically and personally. Supporting women’s media can help create more positive narratives too.

Power Tool #9: Tell Your Story

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, told a story that changed how Americans thought about slavery and intensified support for abolition. It became the second best-selling book of the Nineteenth Century, behind only the Bible. Stories we tell ourselves and about others define us, shape us, limit us if we don’t watch out and help us be unlimited if we do it right. Telling stories is a power tool for self-help – and for helping others. It defines you as much as you define it. Your story is your power and your truth. What stories do you tell yourself about yourself? How do they enhance or limited you? How have personal stories moved you to take action at work, in politics, or in our personal life?