RUP Core Concepts

What is Right Use of Power™?

Right Use of Power™ is a dynamic way to explore issues of ethics and power, both personal and professional. This study can be profoundly restorative and empowering. This approach brings heart and soul to ethics, and builds sensitivity and awareness to the use of power and influence.

The power spiral model is at the heart of Right Use of Power™. Increasing skillfulness is learned through a spiraling process of gaining understanding and awareness at higher and higher levels of complexity, inclusivity, and transcendence. As you gain the knowledge and skills you need to use your power wisely, you’ll explore and engage with these four dimensions of the spiral:

Be Informed & Present

Be Compassionate
& Aware

Be Connected
& Accountable

Be Skillful & Wise

Be Informed & Present

Ethics, in its greatest context, is the practice of the right use of power in all relationships. Here, you'll learn about the inherent dynamics that accompany relationships where there is a role power difference - the potential for good, the responsibilities, the distortions, the vulnerability, and risk for harm. You’ll learn to gather the guidance you need for right use of power actions - from the people you are with, your internal felt sense and intuition, and from the lived history of your service profession in the form of ethical codes or guidelines.

Be Compassionate & Aware

The focus of this dimension is self and self-awareness. You’ll come to understand and learn from your attitudes, beliefs, wounds and habits in relation to issues of power and authority. You’ll explore your empowered and disempowered self and discover how your use of power and influence affects others. You’ll reflect on examples of misuses of power and work with understanding and healing shame, an isolating and disempowering emotion. You will bring mindfulness and presence to your responses and learn how to live in the power zone.

Be Connected & Accountable

You’ll learn that ethical behavior is dependent upon being in right relationship, which begins by acknowledging the power and complexity of connection. You’ll increase your skillfulness in sensing difficulties and staying current in both personal and professional relationships. You’ll learn about the many factors that can lead to unintended harm. You’ll practice staying connected even in conflict and using conflict to clarify, resolve, and repair relationships. Lastly, you’ll begin to understand that accountability is an expression of caring.

Be Skillful & Wise

In this dimension, wisdom is developed and utilized. You’ll learn that doing the right thing is more effective when it’s done skillfully. You’ll identify and study personal tendencies, beliefs, and barriers that may make us vulnerable to specific misuses of power. You’ll increase your understanding of power dynamics and diversity issues, while putting into action good self-care, which is vital for the wise use of power. You’ll refine skills of asking for, receiving, giving and using feedback. Ultimately, you’ll come to see that wise and skillful uses of power are a social force for good.

Our Curriculum

DIMENSION 1:
GUIDED USE OF POWER

Be Informed & Present

  • Own your power and influence.
  • Understand your values and ethical guidelines.
  • Know the dynamics of up- & down-power roles.

FOCUS ON INFORMATION

  • Reframing power as a good thing: the ability, to have an effect, and to have influence
  • Differentiating role power and personal power
  • Understanding the dynamics of up-power and down-power and using both positions to the highest and best
  • Owning added responsibilities when in up-power roles using the 150% principle
  • Gaining insights about your personal power and its impact on others

DIMENSION 2:
CONSCIOUS USE OF POWER

Be Compassionate & Aware

  • Engage your curiosity and history well.
  • Attend to self-care
  • Infuse your power with heart.

FOCUS ON SELF

  • Discovering limiting beliefs resulting from your personal history with issues of authority and power
  • Reframing and using feedback as an investment in relationship
  • Working with disempowerment in Self and others
  • Linking power as strength with power as heart, soul and wisdom
  • Attending to multiple levels of self-care, self-awareness, and self-correcting

DIMENSION 3:
RESPONSIBLE USE OF POWER

Be Connected & Accountable

  • Track your impact and ask for feedback.
  • Stay in right relationship and use the 150% principle.
  • Resolve and repair.

FOCUS ON RELATIONSHIP

  • Shifting conflict from trauma to opportunity
    Practicing resolving difficulties and repairing relationships
  • Learning strategies for working with bosses who misuse power
  • Understanding and de-activating shame so that it doesn’t impair relationships
  • Responding non-defensively when impact and intention don’t match

DIMENSION 4:
WISE USE OF POWER

Be Skillful & Proactive

  • Think pro-actively.
  • Stay present and in The Power Zone.
  • Use your up and down-power leadership wisely and well.

FOCUS ON WISDOM

  • Responding constructively and pro-actively to power challenges
  • Applying the socially intelligent model of power
  • Knowing and using the four aspects of the power spiral
  • Increasing effectiveness by expanding one’s range of comfort with the power parameters
  • Exploring four leadership power styles

Below is a video from our social action partner, “BePop” Be Power Positive. Watch the video then take the quiz to find out how you use your power.

(Please note: When you click on the button above, you will be taken to the Be Power Positive site.)

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