"How have you abused your power?
How have you abused your power?
How have you abused your power?"

At first, in my mind's eye, I was speaking loudly to someone I had experienced as clearly abusing their power, and as I was doing so, I knew full well that I eventually would need to answer as if I was sitting in their shoes.

Except I didn't, not exactly.

I was doing an aspecting session, and in one such a session it is only with me, myself, and I—and any and all archetypes willing to show up. I speak as one, and then I move to the other side of the pillow and I answer as another.

And so as I slowly transformed from myself into the archetype of Responsibility, I too found my nemesis slowly transforming into the archetype of Accountability.

Each as a solid, mature, aware, secure, and wise archetype of the leader.

Leader meeting leader.

Responsibility calling in Accountability.

Inescapable. Unalienable. A union as divine as the quote in Spider Man: "With great power comes great responsibility"

If accountability is being at least partially responsible for the impact our actions have on others, once I moved to the other side I had to answer with utmost integrity.

I thought I would leave my nemesis without words. Instead, I found the strength and power to live up to this deep inquiry:

"How have I abused my power?'

The answer was so simple it left me baffled:

Every time I used my power and influence in a way that allowed for someone to be left less than whole.

Every time I used power and influence I had not fully learned to own and master.

I could argue accidents, mistakes, "not my fault", or "not my responsibility" all I want.

But if I acted in a way that was at least partially responsible for impacting another, leaving them harmed, at a loss, eroded, lacking, or negatively impacted in any way, I had to acknowledge my part in it, and seek to restore them just as well.

If we step on someone's foot and break their toe, the least we can do it support them in getting it fixed.

In matters of power and impact, it's crucial that we as leaders recognize how our actions and words might leave others in diminished ways, either because of our actions, inactions, or because of how they perceive us as powerful (therefore giving us power over them).

As such, we have influence over them, and the better most able actor in this influence is not them: it's us.

Fair enough, they can learn to protect themselves from the kind of influence that harms them, such as continuing to perceive us as regular humans, but since we can and *might* flex our power in ways that we may not notice and which may be harmful to them, that are *always* taking a risk when doing so.

We aren't taking nearly as much of a risk by having them in our sphere of influence.

And when we flex our power to influence outcomes through role power (as leaders), we have less to lose than they do.

And, it's highly likely that we won't know when they lose, because they may just walk away, distraught, diminished, lost while we continue to lead as if nothing happened.

This to me connects to the power paradox that states that the more power we gain, the less empathy we have.

And it makes sense: the more influence we have, the less it is possible to understand how many people are impacted by it no matter how much we try.

Do you know how many people love you? Or worship you? Or talk about you in therapy? Or silently curse your name?

The truth of learning to be a leader is that you will never fully know who you've left harmed and how.

And the paradox is that in order to be a leader who is both responsible for the impact of your influence and accountable for the impact of that influence, you have to continually try.

And, you will never be done trying.

Not as long as you have influence with the great many people in your tribe, your community, your group.

The only ways you'll possibly know how you've impacted others such that you may learn to move the energetic body that is represented by your "sphere of influence" is with the qualities of humility, curiosity, empathy, attunement, care, and consideration.

With them, you'll slowly be able to discern this giant of a body, not in real time, but by the path of positive and negative impact it leave behind as it moves through the world.

Success and harm.

But because success is easy to communicate and because harm is much more difficult to express, understand, and share without it being received (or feared of being received) with defensiveness, you will hear a lot more about your successes than your faults and harms.

You might not understand at first as you hear the feedback of positivity and take it in stride.

And harm moves much more slowly than pats on the back.

It takes time for those who get hurt by our influence and power to integrate, heal, and come back with a coherent understanding of what happened beyond the gaslighting we may have thrown to deter detractors and naysayers once we understand we have little idea what might be out there waiting for us.

Then we might hear whispers at the edges of our knowing, as the truth slowly emerges about how we abused our power, whether out of simple immaturity, lack of awareness, insecurity, or lack of wisdom.

And how others have been hurt.

We may have patched these holes in our psyche and integrated our shadows such that we may never make past mistakes again, but what we have left behind, a broken promise, a broken heart, a broken relationship, a broken engagement still exists.

And when responsibility finally calls for accountability, we will know our time has come, to reluctantly (if we know nothing yet) or gracefully (it we are lucky to have learned to be humble) own the emotional/primal cost (on others) of our learning to be better and more powerful humans.

Or perhaps this is when humility will finally be learned, and when we will begin to attune with maximum care and consideration as we take the next step on our path to leadership.

Until we have learned to use the power and influence given to us without a chance to leave another diminished, we will be abusing our power.

And so it is now, in the future, and in the past which we now have to clean up to fully own this power.

There is no other way.