About Me
Welcome to A User’s Guide to Power. I’m your host, Julie Diamond, and I live and work in Portland, Oregon. For the last 25 years, I’ve worked as a trainer, facilitator, coach and consultant with individuals, groups and organizations on the problems and opportunities related to change, conflict and life in groups. I am a founding member and Director of Training and Program Development at the Process Work Institute in Portland, a center for training and research in the field of Process-oriented facilitation, the work of psychologist Arnold Mindell.
I’m also an avid cyclist, having the amazing good fortune to live in Portland, the bicycle Mecca of North America. And foodie. Again, lucky to be in Portland, not only because of its fun restaurants, food politics and culture, but also because you can pretty much step outside anywhere in Oregon and within an hour, have gathered, foraged, fished, picked or hunted your meal yourself.
I’ve come late to blogging, and am relatively unschooled in this. So thanks for bearing with me and with the occasional 404 Error Message you might come across. Hopefully the site will grow in sophistication as I do.
About the topic
Why this blog? And why power? I’ve been a student of the dynamics of power in groups ever since I can remember. I am fascinated by the power of groups – for good and for bad. I love studying how they work, don’t work, form, fall apart and self-govern, and the role leadership plays in it all. I see group dynamics as the microprocess of democracy –the minutia of interaction is a microcosm of the democratic process. After working for several years on an enterprise development project in Eastern Europe, facilitating and consulting with stakeholders from Western Europe and former communist countries, I saw clearly how democratization is a psychological process if it is ever to be a political one. How we use power, govern ourselves and others, our capacity for dialogue, difference, and uncertainty are the pillars of emotional intelligence and necessary ingredients for a thriving democracy. Thanks for joining me in thinking and learning about this topic.
About this site – posting, guidelines, contributions
This blog focuses on learning about power, growing our leadership skills. Most blogs on leadership fall into one of two camps: how-tos’ on leadership challenges (change, communication, navigating economic challenges) or blogs that critique leaders: politicians, CEOs, etc. This blog will be different. I’m interested in exploring how we grow into leadership; how we use power, the fog of war that awaits us as we step into the role, and how to navigate the pitfalls and hazards of wielding power and authority. In short, I’m interested in learning more about the behaviors and skills comprising our use of power. Even though power is most often associated with office, strength, economics, or whatever, at its root, it’s still a set of behaviors. And therefore, using it well is learnable. As such, this blog will be personal, hopefully a place where learning, mistakes, best practices and stories can be shared.
Contrary to the cautionary advice of blog mavens everywhere, the posts will frequently be of article or essay length and new posts will appear less frequently. I’m not a big fan of short posts that just link to other blogs or articles. I’m more interested in going deeply into ideas than tracking current events; in this, I’m very inspired by Joel Spolsky’s writing, whose blog I read in spite of having absolutely no idea what C++ means. So, while I do like to read what others write, and will occasionally write about it here, short, frequent posts that link to what others have written will be done elsewhere and done better.
The Piazza page on this site has links and resources, tips, and advice, and eventually forums on the topic. There you will find frequent posts and links to newsworthy items and articles related to the topic of power and leadership. It is also a forum for discussion on topics related to power and leadership.
Comments
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