We often refer to people as powerful. But what does it mean? How does one attain power? And most importantly, what do you do, once you have power?
What better way to define power except through the voices of the powerful? In this video Forbes, interviews some of the world’s most powerful women for their take on what power means.
I learnt the oddest of things from this video. While most will agree that power is influence, these women also agree that power is the ability to make a difference. They suggest that power is achieved by being authentic, honest, working hard…and of all things being vulnerable! To them power is giving. It is helping people and motivating them to reach their fullest potential. Real power isn’t command and control. Most importantly, power is wasted when it isn’t used to effect positive change! Going by these definitions, everyone has power. We all have daily opportunities to give, motivate and cause positive change. This means we don’t have to wait to become CEO’s or earn our first million to become powerful, we already are! All we need now is action, perhaps collective action, to realise and maximise the combined influence of our power for positive change.
My biggest take-away from this video is the need to reorient our thinking on power. Perhaps, for too long we have thought about power in command and control terms as opposed to maximising its potential as a change agent. For the next few weeks we will aim to provide more insight into this topic. We will feature some of the most powerful people in the world and analyse their definition and use of power. We hope our #powerseries will provide transformed meaning to the use of power and catalyse real change in the areas of our readers influence.
How do you define power? Send us an email on glory@inspiredbyglory.com or drop a line in the comment box
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