“A profound book that offers us a wise way to negotiate our toughest group, community, and societal challenges.” —William Ury, New York Times-bestselling coauthor of Getting to Yes To try to solve their toughest problems, people either push for what they want at all costs or try to completely avoid conflict. Adam Kahane argues that these two seemingly contradictory approaches are each a reflection of two distinct, fundamental drives: power, the single-minded desire to achieve one’s solitary purpose; and love, the drive towards unity. They are inextricable parts of human nature, so to achieve lasting change you have to able to work fluidly with both.
Kahane delves deeply in the dual nature of power and love, exploring their complex and intricate interplay. With disarming honesty he relates how, through trial and error, he learned to balance between them, shifting from one to the other as though learning to walk—at first falling, then stumbling forward, and finally moving purposefully toward true, lasting reconciliation and progress.
For the last twenty years Kahane has worked around the world on a variety of challenges: economic development, food security, health care, judicial reform, peacemaking, climate change. He has worked with diverse teams of leaders—executives and politicians, generals and guerillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists. He has seen, up close and personal, examples of inspiring progress and terrifying regress. Power and Love reports what he has learned from these hard-won experiences.
“This exceptionally brave book pierces to the heart of how we must act in the world we so want to change.” —Margaret J. Wheatley, bestselling author of Leadership and the New Science
War is no way to resolve our most problematic group, community, and societal issues, but neither is a peace that simply sweeps our problems under the rug. To create lasting change we have to learn to work fluidly with two distinct, fundamental drives that are in tension: power the single-minded desire to achieve one's solitary purpose; and love the drive towards unity. They are seemingly contradictory but in fact complimentary. As Martin Luther King put it, "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic."
Using revealing stories from complex situations he has been involved in all over the world the Middle East, South Africa, Europe, India, Guatemala, the Philippines, Australia, Canada and the United States Kahane reveals how to dynamically balance these two forces. Just as when we are toddlers we learn to shift from one foot to the other to move ourselves forward, so we can learn to shift back and forth between power and love in order to move society forward.
“Adam Kahane gradually builds his own proficiency at balancing empathy (love) and resolve (power), and thus raises the game for all of us.”
Art Kleiner, Editor in Chief, strategy+business, and author of The Age of Heretics
“In this rare and valuable book Kahane unfolds a simple and penetrating insight: that power and love are two axes that delineate our individual and collective journeys. Either we master the balance of power and love, or we will fail in our efforts to realize deep and lasting change.”
—Peter Senge, Founding Chair, Society for Organizational Learning; Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and author of The Fifth Discipline
“This exceptionally brave book pierces to the heart of how we must act in the world we so want to change. Kahane’s willingness to look honestly at his experiences—working on the world’s most difficult issues and in its most difficult places—is a model of courageous inquiry.”
—Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science
