12: The Pleasures of Power with Jonathan Gosling

Professor Jonathan Gosling has been working in leadership
development across the globe and in diverse settings for many
years.  In this podcast he discusses with Simon the
pleasures of power. They reflect on their own relationships to
power, those of leaders they have coached and the tangled
collusions around domination and submission. Many leaders who
seem powerful to others feel themselves to be trapped in
organisational cultures that render them quite powerless in these
totalising corporate systems.  Power can be harnessed for
the benefit of others, and can give individuals meaning and a
sense of agency and identity, and it can also feed ego and be
coercive.  Jonathan offers the novel idea of "powering"
turning power into a verb that opens up how power is used
tactically in situations.  The discussion ends with
reflecting on how power may or may not support the good life and
good society. 



Bio 


Jonathan Gosling is a sailor, emeritus professor and consultant
to OD projects in primary health services in southern Africa. He
is also lead faculty with the Forward Institute to promote
responsible leadership. He is director, Pelumbra Ltd, and was
previously Professor of Leadership at the Universities of
Lancaster and Exeter. His own troubled relatedness to power and
the people who wield it has drawn him into most of his
career-defining predicaments - in universities, community
mediation, private equity firms, electronics companies,
governments, emergency response agencies and more.