ASPECTS OF POWERof their own, they were still able to take power away from the
others and become the new leaders.TOMMY'S TAKEOVER
This ability to change situations to fit one's need for leadership
is something we are either born with or learn very early in life.
Take Tommy, a four-year-old who was enrolled in a play group
by his working mother. Tommy very quickly became the leader
of the group, but then his family moved and a year later, at five,
Tommy was put in another play group in mid-session.
For a while Tommy was low man on his new group's totem
pole, but instead of accepting this, Tommy studied the situation
carefully. By playing with the other children, he learned the sched-
ule of activities; then he gradually began to give orders, to tell
the other children what to do—and they obeyed him.
A born leader? A powerful personality? Maybe, but what Tommy
actually did was to order the other children to do what they were
already doing or what they were going to do next anyway! The
chances of their disobeying his orders were slim.
Once he established his right to give these orders and be obeyed,
he began to make slight changes in the established routine, to
insist that everyone should use red crayons to color a woman's
dress and blue crayons for a man's suit, or he would hurry things
up: "We have to finish all our work by two o'clock!"
The changes were always simple, things no one cared much
about, and gradually Tommy's way was adopted.
Once he had come this far, Tommy took a final step. He an-
nounced that he owned certain things in the play group, all the