Power and Love*
Back in May, someone recommended ‘Power and Love‘, a book by Adam Kahane. I’ve only just got around to reading it – and it was one of the most accessible ‘social change’ books I’ve read. It’s essentially about balancing ‘Power’ – the drive for self-realization and control-over – with ‘Love’ – the drive for unity and connection.
As Kahane admits, these ideas aren’t new (although he describes new ways of implementing them). For example, he quotes ‘one of the greatest practitioners of nonviolent social change’, Martin Luther King Jr.: ‘Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic’.
Understanding this dynamic is core to nonviolence, and needs to be core to peace and justice work. I asked one of my interviewees this July about the power dynamic between funders and grantees. His response was that I had asked a typical Quaker question. I was surprised – isn’t power something we should all be talking about? Reading ‘Power and Love’ I remembered how fundamental this understanding is to my way of thinking, and to the way that the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust – a Quaker organisation striving for peace and justice – works.
Now, threads linking all this keep appearing, unexpectedly. Out of the blue I had an email from Linda Mitchell, who works with Mike Love of Together for Peace in Leeds (www.t4p.org.uk). It was Mike who recommended the book – thanks, Mike. Then, by chance I met a foundation colleague who’s worked with Adam Kahane’s organisation Reos (www.reospartners.com). It turned out he has also worked with my South African colleague, the wonderful facilitator Rebecca Freeth – who has also worked with Reos. In a fortnight’s time, Rebecca will be helping us to run a gathering of grantees, and now I’m looking forward to that event even more.
This week, at a workshop of the European Programme on Integration and Migration EPIM (www.epim.info), I saw how the power-and-love dynamic can play out in a funders’ collaboration. Grantees value support and direction from funders – as long as it’s done with love, rather than from a ‘power-over’ perspective. Grant-makers value working closely with grantees – as long as there is honesty and transparency about the power dynamics that exist. It’s not easy to get right, and partners may sway towards power and then back to love, and back to power again, but when it works great things can happen.
*Adam Kahane (2010) Power and Love Berrett-Koehler Publishers
