Strength, Power and Readiness Are Your Best Allies

When facing any situation from running six miles to presenting to six board members to feel absolutely ready gives you the leverage you need to begin your task on the right foot.

Your leverage is better when you feel ready for any situation. This is when you are best able to overcome setbacks and make an obstacle merely temporary. You are in your own power curve, with your emotions aligned to help your rational thinking, not to obscure it. You possess what I call personal power.

I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again: The more personal power you bring to any situation, the less vulnerable you are to people working from position power. Professionalism benefits from understanding this because it leads to stronger decisions.

The standard marker of position power is having authority over others by virtue of a piece of paper, badge, uniform or title some recognizable sign to both holder of the power and those powered upon. However, the more important power, the one felt but unseen except by the effectiveness of its results, is more difficult to understand, unless you understand yourself.

Take officiating a football game, a situation I know well. It requires more than a striped shirt to control a game. Solid knowledge of the rules and strict attention are required, of course. But more important, you must have a particular command of yourself that is above the usual idea of self-control. The extra quotient is self-knowledge. It promotes the composure necessary for making quick decisions in unpredictable circumstances, which are abundant in football games, business, and life alike.

Football is a controlled environment compared to business and life in general. Who’s got the ball, or how the competition is faring in market share, is much easier to follow than the constant intermingling of love and family, friends and death, the national deficit, inflation, weeds in the grass and time marching on. The result is that it’s easier to be confident in your work than it is to be simply confident of yourself.

I can understand why many would want to reject the notion that self-understanding and self-control are more difficult to master than business principles, but wait. Plain observation of your everyday confusions and the control points you use on yourself or the ones others use on you will convince you that this is true

And, when you consider that corporate personalities are formed from human personalities, the importance of bringing personal power to bear in all business and living situations becomes clear and paramount.

A standard dictionary meaning of power is the ability to do or act, the capability of doing or accomplishing something.

This covers simple acts like getting out of bed in the morning, or twisting a tight cap off a bottle, but says nothing about the function of time, or the necessity of flexibility and judgment, each an essential aspect of power.

Consider sports again. It’s agreed that athletes need top strength in the skills of their particular game, whether it be a strong backhand, a strong punch, a strong throwing arm, or whatever. But no player makes it to the NFL, the NHL, the NBA, the Davis Cup, the Olympics or any world-class arena by being merely strong…not even by being strong and dedicated. There’s no power in strength unless it is turned into ability through flexibility and judgment. Power comes from applying strength quickly, and getting it where you need it. Power must conquer the rush of time and still be on the mark.

Expressed as an equation, power equals strength divided by time. Or, as a physicist would say: power is the work done or energy transferred per unit of time. Powerful machines do their work fast. But machines have repetitive jobs to do, tasks that people generally don’t want to do. People prefer variety. They enjoy using their skills of judgment. This is good, because business and the business of living demand many more judgment calls than any sport ever does.

In sports, because the circumstances are fairly well contained, correct judgment is easier. There are fewer choices. The right action is the one that moves the play toward scoring. If there is a question of what would have been a better choice, there’s always the video tape to learn by. Sports don’t involve the old bugaboo of wisdom.

It’s not so simple in business and in life. Because we live with the results of how we put the power equation to work at the office and in our daily lives, it’s helpful to look at what develops good judgment. Everyone knows that bad judgment sometimes can bring about short term gain, and that it’s easy to accept this for varying lengths of time. But we all make a mental tape of the daily game and are forced by something within ourselves to review it.

If we don’t like what we see, self-esteem, and consequently self-confidence, get bruised. Self-respect is supposed to protect our self-esteem and self-confidence by delivering honest, intelligent choices, quickly and steadily. The pervasiveness of the save yourself mentality indicates that self-respect doesn’t always play as strong a role as protector of our personal power.

Power, then, is the sum of strength and flexibility multiplied by judgment, determined in the quick of time. It is not a single force or action, but is an interconnected assemblage of habits of thought.

Personal power is similarly a skill of awareness and self-control, but it must include intelligent choices that come from firm self-knowledge. You find your power by being critical of short-sightedness. You gain it by looking at your real interests and the distant results of your goals. You develop it by coordinating your basic strengths with these goals. You claim it by digging out of the quagmire of indecision. You achieve it by choosing self-directed harmony. You clear a path for it by forgiving past mistakes. You enhance it by building a belief in the potential of excellence, both in yourself and in others.

Personal power always comes from an integrated self. It is a skill of control, gained by careful, aware practice. Professionalism and happiness require it. Its benefit is readiness and effectiveness. Personal power is your best ally, always.