Muscling Resolutions
Beyond Coercion
MUSCLING RESOLUTIONS
Coercive power is not the most admired form of power, but it can be the impulse of leadership when things get difficult, complex or frustrating. Coercion might be imaged as a significant muscle that can apply pressure to move an object. It is suggested to many in leadership that they are to have significant muscles of ascribed or acquired authority in order to move circumstances or people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Coercive power might make something happen quickly, but it is not correlated to lasting change or enduring effects on a system. Lasting change happens through persuasive strength. There are at least three hallmarks of persuasive strength:
1. Persuasive strength intends to be affected by others. Whether listening or observing, persuasion begins as discovery that takes genuine delight in what is discovered.
2. Persuasive strength makes demands of itself before making demands of another circumstance or another person. This could be likened to bodybuilding in the gym: one sets aside time to develop one’s own strength to have functional strength in the world. Very often, the persuasively strong person has spent time in the proverbial gym building the “listening and observation muscles” through weighted patience and repetitious reflection. “What is being asked of me from this circumstance that requires my persuasive leadership?”
3. After being affected by others and building strength through patience and reflection, persuasive strength asks itself what is possible. Persuasion gravitates toward possibility. Even further, persuasion is motivated by the possibilities that have integrity for the whole community.
When persuasion taps possibility, the one in leadership cannot tell who is persuading who. It is as if something like the Spirit has taken over and catalyzes each individual. In such circumstances, the communal effort makes it very difficult to understand where a good idea began or to whom a good outcome belongs. Persuasion persistently abides betwixt and between.
In a radically individualized culture, we are tempted to muscle our way into individual resolutions that are so hard to actualize on our own. It may be that coercion does not even work upon the self.
May the possibilities be yours in this New Year.
