Leadership and Power

There is a great deal of debate about the correct definition of leadership. Neuberger lists 39 different definitions from the German literature alone – and even this list is not complete. In this article I use the word leader in a very broad, pragmatic sense inspired by Greenleaf: A leader is a person whom other persons follow; i.e. a person who dares to say "I will go come with me" and where people follow this call. A leader in this sense might be a boss in a typical workplace hierarchy, a leader within an organisation of volunteers, a teacher at a university, a speaker or an author who has influenced people through his/her ideas, et cetera.

By using the term Christian leadership I refer to two different groups. Firstly, I refer to leaders in a specific Christian context like a church congregation or a Christian non-governmental organisation (NGO). Secondly, I refer to leaders who work in a secular environment like the business world or the government, but who want to lead their staff/followers according to their Christian worldviews and ethical standards, whether or not these followers share the Christian worldview of the leaders.

Of course, the literature on power is marked by a deep disagreement over the basic definition of power. Instead of offering a new definition I will refer to four classical definitions, because these are widely accepted and they cover the most essential aspects. My starting point is three classical monographs on power. These famous monographs were written in the context of the two World Wars, perhaps because during times of war the human experience of power and powerlessness is very intense. Firstly, consider the German sociologist Max Weber and his volume Economy and society, published posthumously in 1921, which is still "widely considered the most important single work in sociology". Weber's definition of power has often been quoted:

In 1938, in anticipation of the next World War, the British mathe- matician and philosopher Bertrand Russell, wrote a book on power in which, among other things, he analysed the power play of the Nazi regime. According to him "power may be defined as the production of intended effects".

After the Second World War, people all over the world, and especially the German people, were very wary of the abuse of power after their experiences during the War, especially with the destructive power of the atom bomb. In 1951, the Italian-German philosopher Romano Guardini had the following special message for those people who were reluctant to use power at all:

Guardini gives a short and concise definition of power: "Power is the ability to move reality".

These three academics agree on the fact that power is the potential, the ability, to do something. It is irrelevant whether the instrument of the power is actually used. In most cases it suffices that people believe that a powerful person could do this or that. Incidentally, each of these authors had a different worldview: Max Weber was protestant, Bertrand Russell was an avowed atheist, and Romano Guardini was a Catholic priest.

Another famous definition of power was given by the American political scientist Robert Dahl: "A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do". Dahl explicitly uses an expression, which is also implicit in Weber’s definition, namely power over. Russell and Guardini de- fine power more broadly as a capacity to achieve intended effects, namely power to. Dowding suggests to use the terms outcome power for "power to" and social power for "power over". This article deals with both aspects.