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Informationen zum Autor Kemi Nekvapil; Foreword by Elizabeth Gilbert Klappentext "A Penguin Life book"--Title page verso. Leseprobe Introduction: About Power “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” —Alice Walker Women today have more opportunities than our mothers and grandmothers ever had, and yet the societal structures we must navigate to claim and own some of these opportunities can still lead us to question our abilities and our power. For many women, “power” is abstract. Many of us have been and continue to be intimidated by it. Throughout this book you will find that I have not used concepts of “soft power” or “personal power.” This is deliberate. Power is power. We do not need to “feminize” it to make it more palatable; we need to redefine it. I want us to reacquaint ourselves with this word in a positive way. Countless women were raised like me to believe that power belongs to others, that it is destructive, and therefore they had no interest in exploring or owning power for themselves. My relationship to power has mainly been one of powerlessness. In my experience, power was White—either a White man in a suit, or a White woman who was blonde and thin. A college education also meant power—if you had a degree, you had more power than someone who didn’t. Being able to get a college education was linked to privilege, which was linked to Whiteness, which in turn was linked to power. At school I was Black, female, and overweight, and a college degree was not an option for me. Power, as it appeared to me then, was not a concept I recognized for myself. Over time I have needed to explore and define power on my own terms. Julie Diamond is a woman whose work I admire when it comes to the subject of power—she is a leadership coach who has spent more than thirty years working in the world of human and organizational change. She is also the author of Power: A User’s Guide, in which she writes: “Power is neither good nor bad; it is energy, a human drive to shape the world, influence others, and make an impact. We need power. Power may be difficult to master, but it’s vital to have. It’s generative and creative.” I like her explanation of power; it’s so much more inclusive than what I had experienced or been led to believe. Add to that the Oxford English Dictionary definition of power—“the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way”—and we have something positive to work with. We all have the ability to do something or act in a particular way. So power is for all of us; it is not for the select few. In my book The Gift of Asking, I talk about the struggle many women have with asking for what they need and want. One of the reasons for this struggle is the belief that to ask is to rock the boat, to no longer be seen as a “good girl.” Being “good”—not asking for more, pleasing others, doing what we are told, and looking “good”—is a way for women to hold ourselves and each other powerless. I have coached hundreds of women in my one-on-one practice and thousands of women in group settings. These are women in CEO roles, women running their own companies, entrepreneurs, managers, women on the land, professional athletes, yoga teachers, activists, social workers, and coaches—women in various positions in diverse industries. Rarely do these women start working with me to explore their power, but in the coaching process most uncover their relationship with power in the same way they uncover their relationship to asking. They explore the times they owned their power, when they had their power taken away, when they gave it away, how they have stepped into their power, and how life changes when they own and harness that power. I am writing this book now at a place in my life where I am no longer going to pretend I don’t have any power. And I am d...
