What Power Lust Reveals

At Ask a Manager a while back, I came across a very good and thought-provoking answer to a question from someone whose employee had wanted to fire someone who offered to resign.

Perhaps the most interesting point Alison Green makes comes early on:

Priorities... (Image by Devin Avery, via Unpslash, license.)

His instinct that the person needed to face "consequences" is troubling. First and foremost, that's not what management is about. You're not a parent, and you're not there to teach anyone a lesson. You're just there to get work done effectively. Sometimes that does mean imposing consequences, but only when it's the logical outcome the situation requires; it shouldn't be about punishing anyone. For example, if an employee struggles to meet deadlines on days they work from home, you might require them to work from the office. That wouldn't be a punishment; it would be a logical consequence of the work issues. [bold added]

Green elaborates on all the ways the employer's attitude can play out badly and undermine his role as manager, and goes on to warn:

That's someone who likes power too much -- and that's a real red flag. You need managers who see authority as just another tool in their tool box to get things done. If they take pleasure in authority for authority's sake, at best they'll be too heavy-handed and at worst they'll be jerks. [links omitted and bold added]

I think Green has read the situation correctly, and this story shows how apt a metaphor the phrase drunk with power is.

In passing, within Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff lists "power lust" as a "form of being out of focus." This example shows how just right he was to do so:

On the conceptual level, the standard of value determining human responses is not automatic. Men's chosen values are not necessarily in harmony with the requirements of survival. On the contrary, a man can avidly pursue irrational values and thereby gain pleasure (of a sort) from the process of harming himself. Such a man inverts his emotional barometer, turning it into an agent of death; the mechanism becomes not his protector, but a siren urging him to self-destruction. For example: the people whose pleasure in life comes from crime or drugs or idleness or power lust or being accepted by the group or from any other form of being out of focus. (337-338) [footnote omitted, bold added]

Just look at all the things this employee misses in his desire to mete out "justice!"

-- CAV