sources of power

Recently I've been experiencing this niggling reminders of what I learned back in freshman year. It is strange that back then, I thought my class on leadership was an utter waste of time. But as I go about working life, sometimes past lessons flash again before my eyes and I realise how true some of those things really are. It's a pity I threw my textbook away because my memory is like a sieve. First, I was reminded of the barometric event and recently, I have been thinking about sources of power.

There are several individual attributes that can be sources of power, and the one I lack most is probably the ability to tolerate conflict. This basically means that you can be a nasty person and push people around and you don't care if they hate you as long as they get your job done. I find this particularly hard because I think I am a generally nice person and I want people to like me. But at the workplace, I've seen some people who are really gifted at making people hate them. (Which is what prompted me to start thinking about this.) And as long as they can tolerate the dagger stares, it doesn't seem to be doing them much harm. So perhaps this really is a source of power.

Another source of power I'm not particularly good at is energy and stamina. This could mean working longer and harder than anybody else. But I have also heard stories of people who drag meetings way past office hours and only proceed to the decision making when everyone else is faint with hunger, fatigue, or in some cases inebriated. Since I would probably be one of the first to die of hunger or fall asleep, I guess this isn't really my source of power either.

Well there's another one. Focus is important too. But since I maintain that I have ADD and I can't focus on anything boring for more than 10 minutes, this isn't exactly my forte.

Darn, I'm out of sources of power. I guess there isn't much hope for me. Well I'm going to try to push people around more.