ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Shotton’s model of OKness in which he diagrams how the dynamic of the powerful and the powerless can be inadvertently maintained. Awareness of this for team leaders can powerfully shift their style of leadership to become empowering and enabling rather than leading in a style that merely reinforces hegemony. Awareness of this dynamic is modelled in the coach-coachee relationship as well as explicitly shared with teams as a framework of understanding power. Leadership from this position where people find their voice is open and expansive. But compliance to the structures and standards is invited in a different way from compliance along the status quo line. A framework such as this can add value to considering how power plays out within a system. Compliance comes through authoritarian inspections and regulation from the ruling class and is responded to with fear, conformity and compliance by the underclass.
