power-with Archives : Conferences That Work

Status and power at meetings

Monday, January 9th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Meeting professionals rarely talk about status and power issues. This is unfortunate because the ways that status and power manifest at meetings matter. Why? Because a majority of those who attend most meetings have little say over what happens at them. Typical meeting formats are rigid, and attendees play largely circumscribed roles.

So, let’s explore the roles of status and power at meetings.

Every meeting has a structure

As Jo Freeman wrote half a century ago, every meeting has a structure.

“Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved.”
—Jo Freeman aka Joreen, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, 1972

Meetings usually adopt traditional structures that attendees seldom question in public. Such structures contain status and power imbalances that can often reduce the effectiveness of the meeting. Meetings that are consciously designed to best fit the needs and wants of all the stakeholders are rare.

Hierarchy isn’t (necessarily) a problem

When we look at a meeting in progress, it’s usually easy to spot any hierarchy that’s present. For example:

The chairperson sits at the end of the table.
Speakers, board members, and panelists face everyone else.
Name badges signal high-status roles.
Only certain people get a microphone.

Hierarchy leads to overt or covert status differences. However, the existence of hierarchical or status differences isn’t necessarily a problem. A high-status, experienced chairperson, for example, may guide a board meeting through a complex agenda far more effectively than if the gathering is structured as a free-floating discussion. Similarly, a clear interactive presentation from an experienced expert to an audience of novices can be an effective way to share important information about a relevant topic.

In addition, when meeting designs support fluid status differences between attendees, hierarchy is rarely a problem. (Here’s how peer conferences support fluid status differences.)

However, hierarchy frequently impedes meeting effectiveness when high-status members use the power imbalance between them and other attendees to impose a meeting structure that suits their purposes.

Status and power at meetings

In 2017, I wrote about Tom Atlee’s discussion of two kinds of power: power-over and power-with (terms that Mary Parker Follett formulated a hundred years ago) and advocated for meetings where power-with holds sway. Richard Bartlett added a third relevant form of power: power-within. Here are his definitions of these “three useful lenses for analyzing…power dynamics”.

Power-from-within or empowerment — the creative force you feel when you’re making art, or speaking up for something you believe in.
Power-with or social power — influence, status, rank, or reputation that determines how much you are listened to in a group.
Power-over or coercion — power used by one person to control another.
—Richard D. Bartlett, Hierarchy Is Not the Problem…It’s the Power Dynamics

Here’s a brief overview of each of these kinds of power dynamics from a meetings perspective.

Power-within

My work is about designing meetings that support power-within for every attendee. There are three overlapping sets of tools for this: agreements, facilitation that supports participants’ freedoms and agreements, and status-leveling processes like The Three Questions.

I go into a lot more detail in my books about why these tools are so important. Check out The Power of Participation for deeper explanations.

Power-with

Maximizing power-with is an obvious force for good for meeting participants (unless, perhaps, you are in a minority with power and want to maintain the status quo.) We are social creatures, and it feels good when we are listened to and experience being truly heard by others—even if they respectfully disagree with us. Consequential bonuses that provide additional joy include discovering agreement, making connections, and moving to action.

Power-over

Power-over is the most common power dynamic at work in meetings.

When power-over meeting dynamics are appropriate and relatively benign

Specifically, power-over dynamics can work reasonably well for meetings when a high-status leader:

Has significantly more expertise and experience than anyone else present;
Is good at communicating what’s necessary via broadcast; and
Is benevolent.

An example would be a high-level, experienced bureaucrat who has the job of teaching the implications of a complex set of new tax regulations to a group of customer service employees who answer tax questions.

Even in situations like this, reducing perceived status can improve the meeting. For example, creating a relaxed and supportive environment for questions and discussion plus breaking regularly into small groups to process learning will improve adult learning better than lecturing followed by testing.

Power-over meeting dynamics are often toxic

But if you’ve ever had low status at a meeting—and who hasn’t?—you’ve likely often experienced toxic power-over dynamics. For example:

Teachers publicly humiliate students in class.
Bosses pressure subordinates to make unwise or unfair decisions at meetings or avoid uncomfortable topics.
Arrogant people interrupt others and monopolize discussions at conference sessions.

We experience power imbalances like these at an early age, and many come to assume they’re “just the way things are”. I’ve written elsewhere about how power-over meeting design became so pervasive (and there’s an expanded version in Chapter 2 of The Power of Participation.)

What’s been fascinating to me during my decades of designing and facilitating meetings is how good meeting design can minimize power differentials between participants, and invariably just about everyone discovers that the meeting improves for them! (Even including the vast majority of the folks with more power!)

Conclusions about power dynamics at meetings

Two essential things meeting designers and facilitators should do to create effective meetings is to support power-within and maximize power-with for participants. Do these well and you will simultaneously reduce the deleterious effects of power-over at your events.

This post was inspired by Richard D. Bartlett‘s article Hierarchy Is Not the Problem…It’s the Power Dynamics. Richard covers work relationships while I have focused on applying his analysis to meetings. Richard also includes suggested steps towards healthy power dynamics at work—well worth reading!

Images courtesy of:

Jacob Lund Photography: Activist Demonstrating Women Power from NounProject.com

Ted Eytan (2017.01.20 Alaska Air Flight 6 in Pink LAX-DCA) CC BY-SA 2.0

Tags: fluid status, frozen status, hierarchy, power, power from within, power-over, power-with, status| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Create Powerful Meetings Instead of Power-over Meetings

Monday, June 5th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

We all want to create powerful meetings, but the opportunity is often missed.

All meetings incorporate power relationships that fundamentally affect their dynamics and potential. Traditional conferences unconsciously promote and sustain power imbalances between the “speakers” at the front of the room and the audience. Such events invoke a version of power Tom Atlee calls Power-over: “the ability to control, influence, manage, dominate, destroy, or otherwise directly shape what happens to someone or something”.

People often tolerate this form of power in their lives (or seek to wield it) because they hold an underlying belief that when you lose control everything turns to chaos. Meeting stakeholders and planners typically subscribe to this viewpoint because they can’t conceive of (usually because they’ve never experienced) a form of meeting that successfully uses a different kind of power relationship: Power-with.

Power-with

Here’s Tom’s description of Power-with:

“Power-with is the kind of power that arises through connection—connection to ourselves, to each other, to what’s going on, and to everything else. We could describe power-with as holistic partnership power. In its most mature and comprehensive form, it involves our ability to see allies, resources, and possibilities anywhere and everywhere, and to engage with them for mutual and collective benefit.”

“Power-with is not the opposite of power-over, because they can and do co-exist. We see power-with enhancing power-over when work teams collaborate to generate market dominance for their company or when activist alliances overwhelm their opponents in the political battlefield. We can also see it in how PR works with people’s instinctive urges and reactions to manipulate them into certain beliefs and behaviors. On the other hand, we see power-over enhancing power-with in competitions that promote collective benefits and win-win solutions, such as the Olympics (at their best) and households and schools competing for the lowest carbon footprint.”
—Tom Atlee, The Dance of Power-over and Power-with

Using Power-with process — my books contain many examples — in our meetings allows us to potentially partner with, learn from, and connect with everyone at the event, rather than a few pre-chosen presenters.

Tom describes the energetics of Power-with as being like those of a dance or a jazz improvisation, requiring the exercise of “attending to, responding to, learning from, and shifting with the reality—especially the vitality—of what’s around us, what’s within us, what’s in front of us”.

Meetings that include Power-with formats have an additional benefit. They provide participants with experiences where there are “an abundance of people and things to work with everywhere”. This allows us to create powerful meetings.

Conclusion

Finally, Tom points out that Power-with…

“is not about suppressing our own needs and aspirations to serve something or someone else. That is an effort to control ourselves, which is a power-over approach. The essence of positive power-with is mutual or collective benefit: I get my needs met and exercise my best self by helping someone or something else meet its needs and exercise its best self.”

This describes the essence of the energy that drives peer conferences and participant-driven and participation-rich meetings: the pleasure gained through co-creating and experiencing mutual benefit for individuals and the group. It’s why being part of such meetings, rather than designing them or writing about them, is my favorite professional activity.

Such a contrast to the dreary, exhausting, and ultimately unmemorable meetings I used to experience and which are still, unfortunately, still far too common today.

Tags: allies, partnership, power, power-over, power-with, Tom Atlee| Posted in Event design | No Comments »