Page 42 - Appreciative Leadership

From Potential to Positive Power 15

Words, language, and metaphors are among the most versatile

tools of Appreciative Leadership. They evoke meaning, emotions, and
resonance among people. As such, they can either reinforce habitual
ways of being, or they can generate transformation. Habits are held in
place and the status quo is maintained through words and language.
Consider the leadership habits evoked by words such as boss, superior,
employees, subordinates, and bureaucracy. In contrast, what leader-
ship habits are prompted when you hear words such as coach, mentor,
associate, business partner, relational responsibility, and self-organizing
system? Each set of words contains a world of relationships, mean-
ings, and accepted performances. Just as words are expressed, so is the
world they contain.
Words and language are also the tools of transformation—some-

times welcome, and sometimes not! Remember the first time you
heard the word Google or blog or Wikipedia? How and with whom did
you make meaning of these strange vocabularies when you fi rst heard
them? Who and what led them to become meaningful resources for
you? What has been your process for turning their latent potential
into power to help you get results and make a positive diff erence?
How has your relationship with technology changed in the pro-
cess? How has the story you tell about yourself and technology
changed? As your answers to these questions most likely suggest: nov-
elty is an invitation to talk with others, to explore potential, and make
meaning of it. In the process, change happens.
Appreciative Leadership chooses and uses words, metaphors, and
language to create the worlds they most desire: to stimulate poten-
tial, to name it, to make meaning of it, and to bring it to life through
inquiry and dialogue with others.

It’s Okay to Be Powerful

Merriam-Webster’s defi nition of power—“the ability or capacity to
1
act or perform eff ectively” —indirectly suggests that it is okay to be
powerful. When would you not want this? When would you not want

to act or perform effectively? In order to be effective, you must be