<p></p><p></p><h1 id="48ee7b82-247d-4952-8805-e62a9f0cee5b" data-toc-id="48ee7b82-247d-4952-8805-e62a9f0cee5b" style="font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Introduction</h1><p style="text-align: justify;">It was a beautiful summer evening in 2014 when I looked out over Yekaterinburg from my executive suite in the elegant Onegin Hotel. Situated on the border between Europe and Asia, this city grew into a meaningful connection point between cultures, trade routes, and the gateway to Siberia.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I closed my eyes and attuned myself to the energy of the land. The first layers felt still, almost empty. But underneath them a deeper undercurrent revealed itself. What I encountered there startled me: the heavy charge of two continental forces, locked in an existential struggle unfolding almost in slow motion. At first, I thought I had simply failed to connect properly with the land. Perhaps I am just tired from travelling, I thought, and I left it at that. In the years since, I have increasingly come to realise how striking and meaningful this seemingly simple phenomenological experience actually was.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In this article, I invite you to explore with me what power really is, and how we might relate to it in a professional and ethical way. Because this subject is large and layered, I have chosen to make it into a series. In this first article, I examine the definitions and limiting beliefs we often attach to power.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><h1 id="48327f58-5bda-4ef6-9333-c31cea6f475f" data-toc-id="48327f58-5bda-4ef6-9333-c31cea6f475f" style="font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Power as a charged concept</h1><p style="text-align: justify;">The word <strong>power</strong> is charged. It evokes associations with influence and strength, but also with powerlessness and dependence. As a result, power and the abuse of power are often almost automatically equated. We see this reflected in the well-known saying: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Sayings like these often express deeply shared beliefs. That is understandable, because many people have experienced how power can tempt people into misuse. At the same time, our relationship to power is deeply personal. From early learned patterns, we often respond to power by grasping for it, shrinking away from it, or submitting to it.</p><p></p><h1 id="168fdacf-e00d-4c65-87a4-688d1d928911" data-toc-id="168fdacf-e00d-4c65-87a4-688d1d928911" style="font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Power is more than dominance</h1><p style="text-align: justify;">And yet, that is not the whole story. Power in itself is neither positive nor negative; it takes on meaning through the way it is used. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines power, among other things, as the ability to control or influence people or things, and also as authority or legal right. In that sense, power is more than dominance: it also refers to capacity, influence, and room for action.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In the same vein, Claude Steiner defines power as: “<em>Power is the capacity to create change against resistance or to resist unwanted change</em>.” In this formulation, power is not limited to control over others. It also refers to the ability to give direction, to set boundaries, to remain steady, and to set something in motion.</p><p></p><h1 id="e10fdef2-29d4-40a1-bc18-35b72908bb15" data-toc-id="e10fdef2-29d4-40a1-bc18-35b72908bb15" style="font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Love as a source of strength</h1><p style="text-align: justify;">Steiner also helps us understand power in another way. He describes love as the fundamental empowering force in human relationships. In the language of Transactional Analysis, that love takes shape in the positive stroke: an act of recognition that confirms and strengthens the other person. When love and recognition become scarce, powerlessness arises more easily. When they can flow more freely, personal power grows.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">From this perspective, power is not only something you exercise over others; it is also something that grows in the quality of contact. Steiner points out that power is much broader than mere control, and mentions sources such as groundedness, passion, love, communication, information, transcendence, and also control. It is precisely here that we see that power finds its most mature form not in domination, but in coherence.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><h1 id="3ad9a389-6430-4037-8db7-2a90f2563f15" data-toc-id="3ad9a389-6430-4037-8db7-2a90f2563f15" style="font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Power and love as each other’s deepening</h1><p style="text-align: justify;">Here Steiner also touches the heart of Transactional Analysis. Real power asks for a clear Adult that perceives and discerns, a Nurturing Parent that protects and nourishes, and a free Child that brings spontaneity, vitality and intimacy. Where the Critical Parent blocks the flow of love and recognition, power games, scripts and powerlessness arise. Where love, information and recognition can flow more freely again, power becomes less a means of control and more a capacity for connection, boundary-setting and conscious change.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Power and love are often seen as opposites, as though one softens where the other must be hard. But perhaps that is precisely the misunderstanding. Love without power can remain stuck in longing, in good intentions without effect. Power without love easily hardens into control. Only when both can flow freely do they truly come into their own. Then love gives power direction, humanity and conscience, while power gives love the firmness to protect, to set boundaries and to make change possible.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><h1 id="56acf905-fd54-45dd-8e50-12b7559d0364" data-toc-id="56acf905-fd54-45dd-8e50-12b7559d0364" style="font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Power on a global scale and in everyday life</h1><p style="text-align: justify;">When I think back to that summer evening in Yekaterinburg, I no longer understand my experience merely as a personal impression, but also as an encounter with a field of forces that has since unfolded ever more visibly between Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the West. What the land allowed me to sense then was the paradox that within the same field of forces both the inevitability of conflict and the seed of its resolution are present. Both ultimately become visible in personal encounter, carried by a shared history and a shared future.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In such a conflict, it becomes visible how power, when it breaks away from reciprocity, truth and humanity, can harden into a force that divides, damages and disrupts. At the same time, this reality calls for an autonomous form of power: a power that, from the Adult, sets clear boundaries without casting the other as “not-OK,” that remains faithful to factual truth, and that breaks the destructive drama triangle by continuing to choose protection, human connection and a just peace.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps the most essential practice therefore begins not only at negotiating tables, but also in small everyday moments: in how we deal with difference, tension and vulnerability; in how we speak without hardening, set boundaries without humiliating, and allow the other person to remain human. There, in that daily practice, love and power may perhaps meet most truly.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><h1 id="bf18e3f2-c4a2-4f21-9eb5-68c996fde6af" data-toc-id="bf18e3f2-c4a2-4f21-9eb5-68c996fde6af" style="font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Looking ahead</h1><p style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps this is also the gateway to a deeper layer. For if power is not only about influence, boundaries or the ability to act, but also about that which helps shape reality itself, then a more fundamental perspective opens up. The question then shifts from: <strong>how do I handle power? to: what is power, in its most essential form?</strong> In the next article, I therefore want to build a bridge to an ancient concept from the Egyptian tradition: <strong>Heka </strong>— not as a curiosity from the past, but as a window into power as a creative force.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p></p>

A reflective article on power as a charged concept, the relationship between power and love, and how to handle power in a professional, human and ethical way.

Handling Power | On Love, Ethics and Personal Leadership

Handling power

Power and love as each other’s deepening

Power on a global scale and in everyday life

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Handling power

Handling power

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