
The Power of Giving Away Power
How the Best Leaders Learn to Let Go
Categories
Business, Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Memoir, Leadership, Audiobook, Management, Cultural
Content Type
Book
Binding
Hardcover
Year
2021
Publisher
Optimism Press
Language
English
ASIN
0525541047
ISBN
0525541047
ISBN13
9780525541042
File Download
PDF | EPUB
The Power of Giving Away Power Plot Summary
Introduction
In a crowded boardroom, the CEO was concluding her presentation about the company's new strategic vision. "Any questions?" she asked. The room remained silent. Later, in private conversations, it became clear that many had serious concerns but felt uncomfortable voicing them. This scenario plays out daily in organizations worldwide—leaders hoarding power, creating environments where true collaboration withers and innovation stagnates. I've witnessed this pattern across my career, from startups to diplomatic missions. We've been conditioned to believe that power is finite—something to be accumulated and protected. But what if this fundamental assumption is wrong? What if the most effective leaders aren't those who hoard power but those who give it away? This counterintuitive approach isn't about relinquishing control or abdicating responsibility. Rather, it's about recognizing that when we empower others, we don't diminish our own influence—we multiply it. Through compelling stories of visionaries like Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, forgotten leadership guru Mary Parker Follett, and the architects of our democratic systems, we'll explore how giving away power creates new possibilities, unleashes human potential, and builds dynamic systems that can thrive amid complexity and change.
Chapter 1: The Pyramid vs. The Constellation: Two Mindsets of Leadership
Charles Thomson isn't a name that appears in most history books, but his impact on American democracy was profound. As Secretary of the Continental Congress in 1776, Thomson found himself tasked with creating the Great Seal of the United States—essentially, America's first logo. This seemingly simple assignment took six years and three committees to complete. The final design featured two sides: the familiar eagle on the front and a pyramid on the back. The pyramid represented strength and durability—a symbol of concentrated, top-down power. But the front featured something different: a "radiant constellation" of stars representing the states. Unlike the rigid pyramid, these stars were deliberately asymmetrical, with each distinct yet connected into a greater whole. Big states like Virginia and small ones like Rhode Island were equally important parts of the constellation. This duality reflected a fundamental tension in how we organize ourselves. When the US Treasury created the dollar bill in 1935 during the Great Depression, FDR insisted on featuring both sides of the seal. Tellingly, he specifically directed them to put the pyramid first—symbolizing a shift toward more centralized power during a national crisis. This arrangement remains on the dollar bill today, a daily reminder of these competing visions. These two symbols—the Pyramid and the Constellation—represent fundamentally different mindsets about power and leadership. The Pyramid mindset sees people as functions within a hierarchical structure, working backward from predetermined goals with tasks carefully controlled to ensure predictability. It offers "freedom from"—security from threats through consolidated authority. The Constellation mindset, by contrast, sets people in motion toward possibility rather than a fixed destination. It values voluntary engagement, with leadership flowing according to evolving needs. When vision and reciprocal commitment guide action, power is given away, then grows, then more is given back. It offers "freedom with"—choice and autonomy alongside connection and stability. These contrasting approaches to leadership shape how we build everything from companies to countries, and understanding them is the key to unlocking a different kind of power.
Chapter 2: From Control to Creation: The Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Leaders
In the early 1990s, Encyclopedia Britannica was at its peak, selling $600 million worth of encyclopedia sets annually. Their strategy was brilliant—salespeople would ask parents, "Are you the kind of parent who is willing to invest in your child's education?" It was ostensibly about good parenting but really played on guilt. The model worked beautifully until Microsoft launched Encarta on CD-ROM. By 1995, Britannica's sales had collapsed. Microsoft had seemingly won the encyclopedia wars. Then Jimmy Wales, a former currency trader from Alabama, entered the scene with a radical idea. His startup, Nupedia, aimed to create a free online encyclopedia written by volunteers. The initial approach was cautious—a seven-step expert review process that produced just 18 articles in its first year. Frustrated by this slow progress, Wales and his team pivoted to a collaborative editing platform called Wiki. They opened the system to anyone who wanted to contribute, with articles attributed to the community rather than individuals. The result was Wikipedia—which grew to 18,000 articles in its first year and eventually became the largest knowledge transfer engine the world has ever known. A similar story unfolded in the financial world. In the late 1960s, Dee Hock, a middle manager at a mid-level bank in Seattle, was assigned to manage his bank's affiliation with Bank of America's new credit card program. The system was failing—banks were cheating each other, and competition was so intense that some card issuers were giving restaurants imprinters designed to crack competitors' cards in half. Hock gathered representatives from participating banks and developed a radical solution: create a system where banks held rights to participate rather than ownership shares, with no centralized power and equal access for all participants. Banks would be free to compete yet able to cooperate when necessary for the system's integrity. The result was Visa—now processing 65,000 transactions per second across 46 million merchant locations in over 200 countries. What connects these stories? Both Wales and Hock rejected the Pyramid mindset's emphasis on control and predictability. Instead of hoarding power at the top or fighting for independence, they created systems of interdependence—where participants could stand out as individuals while fitting into something larger. They understood that uncertainty isn't something to be eliminated but rather a source of energy to be channeled through flexible, adaptive networks. Their success came not from commanding others but from creating conditions where diverse participants could contribute their unique gifts to a larger whole. This is the essence of Constellation thinking—recognizing that the most powerful systems aren't built through control but through connection.
Chapter 3: Integration Over Compromise: Mary Parker Follett's Forgotten Wisdom
Born in 1868 near Boston, Mary Parker Follett would become what Peter Drucker called "the brightest star in the management firmament," yet her name has been largely erased from history. Her journey began with personal experience: watching her father, a Civil War veteran struggling with alcoholism, finally achieve sobriety not through authority figures' commands but through a fellowship of peers sharing their stories. This early lesson—that lasting change comes through connection rather than control—shaped her thinking profoundly. After graduating with honors and studying under William James at Harvard's Annex (the precursor to Radcliffe College), Follett wrote a groundbreaking thesis on leadership in the House of Representatives. She observed that effective Speakers didn't rely on hierarchical power or personal charisma but developed a "creative blend" that made colleagues feel they were generating power together in response to situations at hand. Later, working in Boston's settlement houses, she noticed that progressive reformers' programs effectively reached women and children but failed to attract fathers. Rather than condemning the saloons and union halls where men gathered, she recognized these spaces offered something valuable—real relationships and mutual support—and sought to create alternatives that could serve entire communities. Follett's greatest insight came during her work on Boston's minimum-wage board, mediating labor disputes. She realized that most human interactions end in one of four ways: acquiescence (giving in), victory (winning at others' expense), compromise (partial satisfaction for all), or integration. Only integration—where all participants create something new together that truly satisfies everyone—produces lasting solutions and builds energy rather than depleting it. She insisted that integration requires three things: expecting to need others, expecting to be needed, and expecting to be changed through the encounter. When Follett brought these ideas to the business world in the 1920s, she became a sensation on the speaking circuit. While the dominant "scientific management" philosophy treated workers as interchangeable parts in a machine, Follett advocated "re-personalization"—bringing people's full humanity into the workplace. She called for "power-with" rather than "power-over," showing that true power isn't about domination but about co-creation. Her ideas spread rapidly until the Great Depression and World War II shifted attention back to centralized control. Follett's work reveals a profound truth about human interaction: the most difficult and rewarding achievements don't come from compromise but from integration—finding the unexpected solution that contains elements no individual would have discovered alone. Unlike the win/win thinking that later leadership gurus would promote (which still frames interactions as contests), Follett recognized that many of life's most important activities—marriage, friendship, community—aren't competitions at all. They're ongoing processes of co-creation that require us to be fully present, genuinely listening, and open to transformation. This perspective offers a radically different approach to power—one where giving it away creates more for everyone.
Chapter 4: Letting Go to Grow: How Successful Organizations Multiply Power
In 2008, Barack Obama's presidential campaign faced a critical juncture. After winning Iowa but losing New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton, conventional wisdom said Clinton's established political "machine" would now take over. Two young Obama staffers proposed a radical solution: give untrained volunteers access to the campaign's precious voter file data and let them organize independently. Campaign leadership initially rejected this as too risky—competitors could steal data, and amateur volunteers might make costly mistakes. But the staffers persisted, arguing that the energy of committed people would outweigh any potential downsides. When leadership finally agreed, something remarkable happened. On Election Day, campaigns typically experience a "flake rate" where 30-80% of committed volunteers don't show up. But in key Obama campaign offices, they experienced a negative flake rate of -50%—for every ten people who committed to volunteer, fifteen showed up. They didn't just avoid flaking out; they multiplied. This multiplication effect appears throughout history. When Churchill sought to build resistance to Soviet expansion after World War II, he didn't call for military buildup alone but for "special relationships" between Americans and British citizens—millions of personal connections that would form "sinews of peace." His insight was that genuine relationships generate energy that formal structures cannot. Ambassador John Gilbert Winant embodied this approach during Britain's darkest hour of WWII. Unlike his predecessor Joseph Kennedy, who had declared "England is gone" and advised Americans to flee, Winant arrived saying, "There is no place I'd rather be at this time than in England." Instead of staying in the ambassador's residence, he took a small apartment near the embassy and walked London streets after bombings, helping clear rubble and asking what he could do to assist. When coal miners in northern England went on strike, threatening war production, Churchill sent Winant to address them. Rather than condemning the strike, Winant connected their struggle against fascism with the fight for social democracy. The next day, headlines read: "Winant Talks, Strike Ends." Google discovered this pattern scientifically through a two-year study of effective teams. They found that the most important factor wasn't skills, personalities, or leadership style, but "psychological safety"—an environment where team members felt safe to take risks, admit mistakes, and bring their whole selves to work. In other words, the best teams were those whose members could form special relationships characterized by trust and mutual commitment. The pattern that emerges across these examples is what I call a "bloom loop." When we invest in genuine connections characterized by vulnerability and trust, we create energy that carries through even routine interactions. Like Jane Jacobs observed in thriving cities, the key is to create conditions where energy circulates and recombines rather than being reflected away unused. This requires letting go of our desire for complete control and embracing the productive uncertainty that comes with true collaboration. When we give away power in this way, we don't diminish our influence—we create the conditions for something much greater to grow.
Chapter 5: Creating Special Relationships: Moving Beyond Transactional Interactions
As US Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2017, I arrived during a challenging period. A British friend warned me not to mention the "Special Relationship"—the traditional term for US-UK ties dating back to Churchill—calling it "a cliché and not true anymore." Two weeks later, Parliament voted against joining potential US military action in Syria, and British newspapers published a mock death notice for the Special Relationship. This led me to reflect on what makes relationships truly "special" versus merely transactional. I began drawing a two-by-two grid. On one axis was "routine" versus "special," and on the other axis was "transactions" versus "relationships." Most of our daily frustrations occur in two quadrants: routine relationships (where we're treated as functions, not individuals) and special transactions (where we're recognized as unique but in bureaucratic, dehumanizing ways). Think of flight attendants robotically thanking passengers or doctors making you fill out the same medical forms repeatedly. Our instinct is to push these interactions toward routine transactions—automating them to eliminate friction. But what if, instead of removing friction, we embraced a different kind of friction—fruitful friction? What if we moved these interactions toward special relationships instead? This doesn't mean making everything intensely personal, but rather creating space for our shared humanity. It means practicing what I came to call "a.l.s.o."—asking others about their hopes and fears, linking them to our own, serving the relationship between us, and opening ourselves up. I put this approach into practice through school visits across the UK. Instead of giving formal speeches, I would ask students to write on index cards what frustrated and inspired them about America. This simple exercise sparked remarkable conversations. Students felt heard, and I gained insights no policy briefing could provide. British officials began asking what I was learning, journalists reported on the visits, and parents told me how meaningful these conversations were to their children. By the end of my tenure, I had visited 200 schools and listened to 20,000 students. Similarly, when I met with my embassy team, I asked them to draw pictures of what a frustrating day felt like. Tellingly, every person drew a triangle with themselves at the bottom. Later, when I asked the entire embassy staff to write one word describing their greatest frustration and one word describing their greatest joy about their work, the answers were consistent: "bureaucracy" and "community." As my deputy wisely noted, "It's the same thing. We are the bureaucracy and we are the community. We do this to ourselves." This insight reveals something profound about organizations: when our community instinct to engage and be hospitable turns inward, it becomes bureaucratic territorialism. Just as money needs to flow to create value (as fundraising expert Lynne Twist taught me), community energy needs to circulate to remain vital. When it becomes stagnant and insular, it "kills" through soul-crushing routines and PowerPoint presentations. The traditional diplomatic response to disagreements is to insist "there is no daylight between us." But denying differences doesn't bridge them. True special relationships thrive not despite disagreements but because they create space for fruitful friction—the productive tension that generates new insights and deeper connections. By embracing this approach, we move beyond the binary thinking that we're either the same or enemies, creating space for genuine understanding across differences. This isn't just good diplomacy—it's the foundation for any meaningful collaboration.
Chapter 6: Passing the Snowflake Test: Building Self-Sustaining Systems
During Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, field organizers developed what they called the "snowflake model." Each paid organizer would recruit six "super volunteers," who would each find ten regular volunteers, who would each be responsible for turning out voters. As more volunteers joined, each organizer's geographical area ("turf") would actually shrink, allowing for deeper relationships and better knowledge of the community. By Election Day, this pattern had replicated across all fifty states, creating a self-sustaining network that could operate with minimal central direction. This snowflake pattern appears throughout nature. Leonardo da Vinci sketched trees with a simple Y-pattern repeated endlessly. River deltas, broccoli, and neurons in the brain all exhibit this same self-similar branching quality—what mathematicians call fractals. Real snowflakes, when viewed under a microscope, are made of tiny snowflakes. These patterns succeed in nature because they can create incredibly complex structures without a complex "master plan." They begin with a successful seed pattern and simply repeat it. Urban theorist Jane Jacobs recognized this principle in thriving cities. While urban planners imposed rigid zoning and "superblocks" that separated functions, Jacobs saw that vital neighborhoods emerged from the complex, spontaneous interactions of diverse people and businesses. Like a rainforest that recirculates energy through many layers, healthy urban ecosystems branch and connect in ways that generate new possibilities. This approach contrasted sharply with the top-down "master plans" that Jacobs fought against, which she likened to deserts—places where energy is mostly reflected away, unused. The key insight is that Constellations grow through self-similarity at every scale. We can test whether our leadership approach will create sustainable growth by asking a simple question: Is the pattern the same at any place and at any scale? Are we shouting for calm? Throwing rocks for peace? Fighting for healing? The pattern we express in small interactions will inevitably be amplified as the system grows. Obama's personal pattern might be described as "listening to link up"—seeking to connect others' hopes and fears to his own in a bond of interdependence that inspires the listener to do the same with others. The campaign articulated this as "respect, empower, include." When I co-taught a fundraising seminar for Obama volunteers, many wanted talking points to "win arguments" for their candidate. I asked them: "How many of you like to lose an argument?" No hands raised. "If nobody likes to lose arguments, why do we convince ourselves that we're in the argument-winning business?" Using a metaphor from business writer Seth Godin, I explained that if you bring a hunting mentality to fundraising, you get hunting results—if ten deer are standing under a tree and you fire at one, the best case is you get one and nine run away. But if you approach it like farming—planting seeds, some of which will take root and bear fruit and more seeds—the math changes completely. This shift from "winning" to "growing" requires embracing uncertainty. Growth and uncertainty come as a package deal. Yet this uncertainty isn't randomness—it's potential energy waiting to be channeled. Constellation leaders create ecosystems where energy can flow and recombine, where people bring their whole selves and transform individual potential into collective action. They recognize that the Pyramid isn't the default model with the Constellation as an alternative—it's the other way around. The Constellation isn't a model at all—it's nature's playbook, life itself, expressing the fundamental pattern of growth and adaptation that sustains all living systems.
Chapter 7: The Courage to Choose Interdependence: Finding a Different Kind of Might
When I gave a keynote titled "Leadership Is a Joke" at a leadership summit, I wasn't suggesting leadership isn't serious. Rather, I was borrowing British comedian Jimmy Carr's insight that "if you play a song and no one likes it, it's still a song. If you write a play and everyone walks out, it's still a play. But if you tell a joke and no one laughs, it's just a sentence." True leadership, like a good joke, requires a completed circuit—a connection between people that creates something new. At lunch, I sat beside a Fortune 100 CEO who had recently announced 1,300 layoffs while simultaneously recruiting for 1,300 new positions. When I asked about retraining, he explained: "If you have the kind of job where you can predict with pretty good precision what your workweek and workflow will look like for the week ahead...and the week after that...well, then your job is gone. Or will be gone soon." The new jobs, he said, required "people who can ask questions of people they barely know...questions that no one involved knows the answer to, and together follow those questions wherever they might lead." This captures our current paradox: organizations desperately need people who can embrace uncertainty and co-create solutions, yet we continue promoting Pyramid thinking. When I ask American high school seniors what inspires and frustrates them about their country, they consistently say they're inspired by "diversity" and frustrated by "division." Remarkably, these words share the same root—div, meaning separate. They love the ability to be distinct individuals yet fear the isolation that comes with it. They want to stand out and fit in simultaneously—precisely what the Constellation mindset enables. Yet our cultural messages reinforce the opposite. NPR analyzed 350 commencement speeches and found the top five messages were: change the world, listen to your inner voice, work hard, don't give up, and embrace failure. Notice something? These messages all envision a solitary hero on a lonely mission—more like an astronaut launching into space than the interconnected reality graduates will actually face. The Constellation mindset would reframe these messages: change your mindset, share your inner voice, work through hard things together, give up power (to make more), and embrace uncertainty. Perhaps the most powerful illustration of Constellation leadership came during President Obama's eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered alongside eight congregation members by a white supremacist in Charleston. Flying to the service, Obama told his advisors, "I might sing." They warned against it. During his eulogy, after saying "Amazing grace..." he paused for thirteen long seconds. Then he began to sing, alone at first. Gradually, others joined in until the entire congregation was singing together. Obama had the power of position and the microphone, but by making himself vulnerable—by giving away that power—he created space for something more powerful to emerge: a moment of healing through shared expression. This is what I call "a different kind of might"—the courage to say "I might" in both senses of the word. It acknowledges both potential strength and uncertainty. Despite what the Pyramid mindset tells us, "I might" is not weakness—it's the starting point for "I might too" and eventually "we might." It's the leap that all Constellation leaders make, letting go of the illusion of complete control to discover the greater power that comes through genuine connection. In our increasingly complex world, this capacity to build bridges rather than walls, to multiply rather than divide, may be the most important leadership skill we can develop. And it begins with the simple recognition that the most powerful thing we can do with power is give it away.
Summary
Throughout this journey, we've seen a fundamental choice in how we approach leadership. The Pyramid mindset promises control, predictability, and independence—freedom from interference and uncertainty. The Constellation mindset offers something different: the opportunity to belong while remaining distinct, to lead while being led, to shape while being shaped. The first provides temporary comfort; the second creates enduring power. From Charles Thomson's radiant constellation of stars on America's Great Seal to Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia, from Mary Parker Follett's insights on integration to Obama's campaign volunteers multiplying beyond expectations, we've witnessed how giving away power doesn't diminish it—it creates more. The courage to embrace uncertainty, to say "I might" in both senses of the word, opens possibilities that control-oriented thinking cannot access. When we stop trying to eliminate friction and instead cultivate fruitful friction—the productive tension of diverse perspectives seeking common ground—we tap into energy that transforms organizations and communities. The path forward isn't through more sophisticated hierarchies or more radical independence, but through genuine interdependence: creating conditions where people can stand out as individuals while fitting into something larger than themselves. This is the leadership our world needs now—not the isolated hero's journey celebrated in commencement speeches, but the connected journey of mutual transformation that occurs when we recognize our fundamental need for one another.
Best Quote
“When it finally came time to analyze the data, what mattered most was what the researchers dubbed “psychological safety.” These were the teams in which the relationships were strong enough that mistakes weren’t held against people and it was okay to bring up hard stuff, to disagree, to ask for assistance, and (to quote Churchill) to show “charity towards each other’s shortcomings.” ― Matthew Barzun, The Power of Giving Away Power: How the Best Leaders Learn to Let Go
Review Summary
Strengths: The book presents a compelling central idea about moving away from hierarchical power structures to a network-based "constellation mindset." The inclusion of anecdotes and characters is appreciated, and the book encourages lifting others as a means of self-improvement. Weaknesses: The review criticizes the book for sidelining important discussions on race and white supremacy, particularly in the context of American history and organizational culture. It notes the lack of substantive discussion on anti-racist work necessary for breaking down societal divisions. Overall Sentiment: Mixed Key Takeaway: While the book offers valuable insights into leadership and power dynamics, it falls short in addressing crucial social issues like race and white supremacy, which are integral to understanding and dismantling hierarchical structures.
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The Power of Giving Away Power
By Matthew Barzun