I’ve long admired john a. powell’s work, and over the years, many people I respect have encouraged me to read The Power of Bridging. This year, the Bush Foundation made a significant investment in Bridging, launching a large-scale common read and offering free copies to anyone interested. I grabbed one immediately.
Later in the year, they hosted a conversation with powell in partnership with Minnesota Public Radio. We were fortunate to attend in person. Reading the book and then hearing him reflect on it live added depth, nuance, and humanity to ideas that already felt both urgent and timeless.
Belonging, Othering, Breaking, and Bridging
powell organizes the book around four interconnected concepts: belonging, othering, breaking, and bridging.
Belonging is the deep human experience of being seen, valued, and authentically included. Othering is its opposite: being excluded, marginalized, or cast as fundamentally different. Breaking is what produces and sustains othering. It happens interpersonally, institutionally, and systemically. Bridging, then, is the work of moving from othering toward belonging by engaging difference without erasing it.
What makes powell’s analysis especially compelling is how widely and thoughtfully it is grounded. He draws from law, social science, neuroscience, history, religion, and culture, weaving together scholarship with stories from his own life, films, literature, and historical moments. The results are rigorous, deeply human, and easy to connect with.
Bridging as a Way of Being
One of the most striking shifts in the book is powell’s own realization that while bridging involves actions, it is ultimately less about what we do and more about who we are.
Yes, there are tools, practices, and strategies that matter. But powell increasingly frames bridging as a way of being in the world: marked by openness, curiosity, humility, and a willingness to remain in relationship across difference.
This mirrors what I see again and again in identity and leadership development. Early on, leaders understandably focus on doing leadership: applying frameworks, practicing skills, trying out strategies. That work is essential. But as leaders grow in capacity and responsibility, effectiveness becomes less about technique and more about presence. Less about control and more about orientation. Less about performance and more about how they show up in relationship to others.
The Spiritual Dimension of Bridging
In the later chapters, powell turns more explicitly toward the spiritual dimensions of bridging. Drawing from his complex relationship with religion, along with Indigenous worldviews, Buddhist traditions, and other wisdom streams, he explores bridging as rooted in an understanding of deep interconnectedness.
This framing moves bridging beyond transactional exchange and even beyond transformation as an outcome. It invites us to see bridging as participation in something larger than ourselves. Not necessarily religious, but deeply relational and ethical.
For me, this spiritual dimension reinforces the idea that bridging is not a tactic to deploy when things break down. It is a posture toward the world. One that asks us to resist fear, scarcity, and certainty in favor of connection, complexity, and care.
Why This Matters for Leaders
In a time marked by polarization, reactivity, and fragmentation, Bridging offers an invitation.
An invitation to shift from fixing people to being with them.
From winning arguments to widening belonging.
From asking “How do we change them?” to “How do we stay connected without collapsing difference?”
For leaders, that invitation is both challenging and clarifying. It reminds us that the work of bridging begins not with strategy, but with how we are oriented toward others and toward ourselves.
