Power is the thing everybody wants the most they can possibly have..

“[Power] means to me pretty much the same thing as freedom. Power is a thing that everybody wants the most that they can possibly have of. That is, skiing is power, sex appeal is power, the ability to make yourself heard by your Congressman is power.

Anything that comes out of you and goes out into the world is power and in addition to that, the ability to be open, to appreciate, to receive love, to respond to others, to listen to music, to understand literature, all of that is power. By “power” I mean human faculties exercised to the largest possible degree. So in a way, in a large sense, by power I mean individual intelligence.

Now when you reach out to another person through the energy or creativity that is in you and that other person responds, you are exercising power. When you make somebody else do something against their will, to me that is not power at all, that is force, and force to me is the negation of power.” (Charles Reich, born 1928)

I have had students that come to the Being A Leader class with the idea that being a leader will somehow give them an advantage in getting people to do what they want and as a result will make much money and thereby gain admiration. Reich points out in the quote above, that this is not ‘power’ at all, but is what he calls ‘force’.

Creating a future that fulfills the concerns of the relevant parties, the definition of leadership, is an exercise in power and anyone is able and capable of achieving great power. It is likely that being committed to something bigger that oneself and a powerful relationship to ones word.