Build power with the people you serve rather than for them: bringing them into the decisions, following their lead on what they want changed, and sharing the power and the platform rather than holding them.
In Build Power with Others and the People You Serve, as the discipline that runs through all of your advocacy, not a single task you finish.
The people you serve are the authority on their own lives. Your role is to build and share power with them, not to exercise it on their behalf. This does not mean you never speak for them; sometimes safety or capacity means you must, and that is legitimate when you do it in a way they would recognize and endorse. It means the default is with, not for, and the drift toward for, because it is faster and you assume you know, is the thing this guide exists to catch.
This is the conscience of the whole pathway. You are on the right side of the line when the people you serve genuinely shape the work and are increasingly leading it, and when you catch and correct your own drift toward speaking in their place. The direction of the work is toward them representing themselves, with your organization as the platform rather than the permanent speaker. Governs the Safe Self-Advocacy Support Guide; feeds the Sustaining Power Plan.
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