[TMA] Reconsider Your Power

From the Standing Desk of Peter Merholz—

In my leadership development work, I think a lot about power, relationships, and demonstrating value. As such, I was surprised when Robert Fabricant's opening keynote at the Advancing Research conference introduced me to a framing of power I heretofore hadn't known:

Positional Power is where it is derived from one's role in the organization. UX/Design types rarely have much positional power (except within their own teams).

Expertise Power is where someone clearly knows more than others about something important (typically drawn from education, research, experience) and so others defer to them and their understanding. When challenged, this is where many UX/Design types try to assert their power, whether its knowledge of users and their behavior, or knowledge of superior processes for doing work. And also explains some of the resistance to 'the democratization' of UX/Design/Research, because without this special knowledge, why would people listen to us? The problem is, if no one else cares much about this expertise, you're just building subject matter barriers between you and others.

Relational Power is derived from, well, relationships, through collaboration, communication, assistance, and shared history. Instead of entrenching oneself in one's expertise, consider instead doing the work to connect with people throughout your organization. Recognizing that UX/Design types rarely have much authority (see: Positional Power), develop your acumen around influence. This is very much at the heart of my leadership masterclass, and was echoed by many throughout the conference.

Hearing this framework, I engaged in a bunch of research (aka, "googling") to see what more I could find. There wasn't much of value, but some stood out:

• The Three Kinds of Organizational Power, by Jacob Kaplan-Moss, who shares some satisfyingly practical takes.
• Generative Tension: Building Relational Power Dynamics while Leading with Structural Authority. This points out some of the caveats around relational power, and ways to address them.
• Relational power and influence strategies: a step further in understanding power dynamics. My googling turned up a number of academic articles by Chinese researchers, most of which were paywalled. This one is freely available, and provides some theoretical grounding in the subject, while also introducing the concept of guanxi, which helps explain the importance of relational power in Chinese culture.

Shared Understanding

Given the act of conference curation, I'm assuming what I'm about to say is intentional: an emerging theme of the conference was how UX researchers are most valuable not in generating 'insights,' but in creating 'shared understanding' throughout an organization.

Insights are a one-way product of expertise power—thanks to my work and brilliance, I am here to tell you what is going on. Shared understanding is built through relational power. By being 'shared,' it requires two-way (or multi-way) engagement, and understanding means that the figurative lightbulb goes off above everyone's head, not just the expert's. Coming to shared understanding takes time, relying on facilitation and collaboration across multiple parties.

This builds in a virtuous cycle with relational power, though it's worth noting that, at the outset, getting the flywheel going can prove difficult, especially if you're meeting resistance* from others. But, as you begin to create shared understanding, you accrue more relational power, which can be used to further and broaden that understanding, which builds greater relational power, etc.

*Resistance: Later in the conference, Alba Villamil used an aerodynamics metaphor that resonated with me. She mentioned how, when researchers meet resistance to an idea, they try to add more 'power' to their insights, say by demonstrating business value. She suggested instead of 'remove friction,' by better understanding the aerodynamics of the organization, and so position or reframe the insight so it can receive uptake within the system.

The hand of the king (or queen)

All this discussion of relational power, and of influence, puts me in mind of something Jesse said to me a while ago, about how he preferred to be the person behind the person, instead of being the person himself. How he wasn't motivated to be the head of design, and was content being an advisor/consigliere/vizier/(choose your metaphor). I realized this was true of myself, that when I was performing at my best, it wasn't as The Leader of the team or function, but enabling and supporting a leader to be the best they can be. (This is why, if I were to ever have a proper job again, I think I'm best suited to being a Chief of Staff.)

Bit of housekeeping

Oh hey—over the weekend, I made the transition to Ghost. This newsletter is published from there, and my website is now hosted on it. I'm hopeful you will have to do nothing, but, given the newness, there may be the occasional blip. Don't hesitate to reach out if anything isn't working for you.