Host Pete Burden speaks with Dr Rob Warwick – Professor of Management and Organisational Learning at the University of Chichester, in the UK.
Our conversation covers Rob’s view of power, influenced by social theorists like Norbert Elias. A view which sees power as a web of relationships. And how Rob understands his responsibilities as a researcher and lecturer within this context – how every conversation can have unknown, and unpredictable, ripples.
He touches on his own visceral experiences of power, while working, for example, in the NHS. And how ‘detached involvement’, and a growing awareness of power can be used, and be useful in getting things done.
Rob also talks about Action Learning and how, for him, this approach, which requires real vulnerability, allows people to develop a new map of power, and therefore gain agency. Despite perhaps more obvious organisational hierarchy and the positional power that comes with it.
Some book suggestions from Rob: