With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility 5.28.21

"With great power comes great responsibility" - Stan Lee, Spider Man.

Well, with great power comes the responsibility to teach and cultivate a learning culture. In reading Ryan Smerek's chapter on Leadership and Learning he points out, "Leadership in the service of learning is about creating the conditions to help those with less power to feel psychologically safe, express their thoughts, and experiment" (p. 7).

So in working with clients in a coaching setting, coaches need to be aware of the (potential) duality of our clients' position as both learner and teacher.

There's an interesting and new concept to me which is the distinction between personalized and socialized power. The former is about advancing personal agendas around power, control, prestige, etc. Whereas socialized power is for "advancing collective interest."

I think it's important to help clients (re) frame the concept of power as something that can be put to great good, especially with a focus and responsibility towards cultivating learning. There are several leadership styles, psychological concepts, and learning mechanisms to enable learning, but it starts with individual's understanding that they hold great power and responsibility for learning!