{"id":515,"date":"2005-10-26T06:46:27","date_gmt":"2005-10-26T11:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/wp\/?p=515"},"modified":"2005-10-26T06:46:27","modified_gmt":"2005-10-26T11:46:27","slug":"sharing-power-giving-it-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/?p=515","title":{"rendered":"Sharing Power, Giving It Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I attended the second STEM Summit for Massachusetts teachers, school administrators and business people who are interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education in the public schools.
\nIt was an excellent session, a lot of great information, and as a bonus, included one of the smartest pieces of advice I’ve ever received about working in collaboration, either in the for-profit or non-profit sectors:
\nYou have to learn to share power, and even to give it away.<\/em><\/p>


\nThis is very difficult for Americans to do. Couples, parents, bosses and employees, volunteer organizations, schools – anywhere you look, people seem to be fighting tooth and nail for control.
\nOne of the best businessmen I’ve ever met, Charles “CAZ” Zraket, former CEO of the MITRE Corporation, used to ask his reports, “Is everything under control?”
\nBy that he meant, “Do YOU have everything under control?” CAZ understood that a company can only function by intelligent delegation to trusted reports. He was a very, very smart man and an effective leader.
\nFeminists often complain that women aren’t taken seriously enough in business because we put a priority on families.
\nI think that’s wrong.
\nWomen, quite frankly, are often NOT very effective in business because we don’t know how to share and give away power.
\nMore often than not, we take on too much, conditioned always to say “yes” and unaccustomed to delegate.
\nI’ve seen this recently in the non-profit sector, and it’s starting to drive me crazy. If someone is too busy to take on a task, then they should either refuse it, or reassign it. Men do that all the time, why don’t women?
\nI’ve been thinking about this mostly because I have an interview next Tuesday with the Cape Cod chapter of the Community Leadership Association<\/a>(CLI), a national organization that “grows” local leaders by providing networking opportunities with others involved in healthcare, diversity, the environment, the economy, the legal system, the arts, government, and education.
\nThe program requires completion of a community service project, and back when I applied, I’d proposed the Technology Workshop.
\nAs it turns out, I was able to start the Workshop without CLI and its network of influentials, but the experience has taught me that I have a lot to learn about running a program like this.
\nSo, that’s the approach I’ll take next week when I meet with their Board, using the lesson of sharing and giving away power as an example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I attended the second STEM Summit for Massachusetts teachers, school administrators and business people who are interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education in the public schools. It was an excellent session, a lot of great … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}