Inhabiting Power: A Leadership Responsibility
This article builds on ideas I first explored in Portuguese for Executiva, around a question that becomes increasingly relevant as leaders move into more senior roles: not whether they have power, but how they relate to the power they already exercise.
Power fascinates, attracts, unsettles and sometimes frightens us. It is rarely neutral and almost never simple.
There comes a point in a leadership career when our relationship with power changes, not necessarily because we start wanting it, but simply because we start exercising it. Decisions begin to reshape relationships. Former peers become affected by choices we make. Conversations become more careful. Silence carries more meaning. What we notice, what we ask about and what we choose not to address can influence an organisation far beyond the formal boundaries of our role.
For a leader, power may be optional as a personal value or motivation. As a responsibility, it is not.
Power Is Not Just a Position
Not everyone who reaches a senior leadership role actively sought power. Some people are strongly motivated by influence, status or authority. Others are motivated by achievement, purpose, expertise, service or the opportunity to build something meaningful. They may even feel uncomfortable describing themselves as powerful.
But intention does not determine whether power exists.
Formal authority is only one source of power. Power can also come from expertise, credibility, relationships, access to information, proximity to key decisions, the ability to set agendas or even the capacity to frame the questions through which an issue will be understood.
A senior leader exercises power every time they decide what deserves attention, whose voice enters the conversation, which behaviour is tolerated and where resources are directed. In this sense, power is fundamentally relational. And failing to acknowledge it does not make it disappear.
What Happens When We Don't Recognise Our Own Power?
This question can be particularly relevant for women in senior leadership.
For decades, social and organisational expectations have often encouraged women to minimise the space they occupy, soften the expression of authority, share credit readily and sometimes attribute their own success to circumstance rather than capability. The consequence can be a curious form of leadership: exercising significant influence while not fully recognising oneself as powerful.
There is nothing inherently virtuous about wanting power, but neither is there virtue in pretending we do not have it. If I underestimate the influence my role gives me, I may also underestimate the consequences of my actions, and of my inaction.
Two Ways of Mishandling Power
There are two opposite mistakes leaders can make.
The first is obvious: overvaluing power.
When power becomes an end in itself, listening tends to narrow. Disagreement becomes threatening. Protecting position can gradually become more important than serving purpose.
The second is quieter and, in my experience, sometimes harder to recognise: undervaluing power.
A leader may avoid occupying the space associated with the role, hesitate to intervene in difficult dynamics or behave as if formal authority somehow changes nothing. The intention may be humility, authenticity or the desire to remain “one of the team”. But organisations do not preserve empty spaces.
If legitimate leadership authority is not exercised, other forms of influence will occupy that space, not necessarily in ways that serve the organisation well.
You do not have to enjoy power to use it responsibly. You do need to recognise that you have it.
The Invisible Cost of Moving Up
There is another, less visible dimension to power. Moving upwards changes more than the organisational chart. It changes relationships and, sometimes, our sense of belonging.
A promotion may mean becoming responsible for people who were previously peers. A former colleague may now depend on a decision we make. People may become more cautious around us. Information may reach us differently. And something can change internally too.
Some leaders experience a subtle sense of guilt as they progress. They may feel they have left people behind. They no longer belong completely to the group they came from, yet do not fully identify with the group they have joined.
From a systemic perspective, advancement changes patterns of loyalty and belonging. This may explain some of the discomfort leaders experience with power.
The discomfort is not necessarily about status. It may be about losing symmetry in relationships. It may be about accepting that decisions now carry consequences for other people's careers, opportunities and lives. It may even be about giving ourselves permission to move forward when others have not.
These tensions are deeply human. Ignoring them, however, does not prevent them from shaping how we lead.
Becoming Conscious of Power
Power awareness is not about learning how to dominate a room. It is about developing a more accurate understanding of our impact.
What changes when I enter the conversation?
Whose behaviour changes because I am present?
What do people no longer tell me as openly as they once did?
Where am I avoiding using legitimate authority because doing so feels uncomfortable?
Where might I be using it without realising the effect I am having?
And which loyalties from previous roles am I still trying to preserve, even when my current responsibility requires something different?
These questions become particularly important at senior levels because power amplifies behaviour.
What may once have been a personal preference can become an organisational signal.
A leader's impatience can become a culture of urgency. Their avoidance of conflict can become systemic silence. Their curiosity can legitimise questioning. Their willingness to listen can create space for dissent.
Power amplifies. Which makes awareness of how we exercise it part of the job.
A Final Reflection
Perhaps the challenge of leadership is not to become comfortable with power. Some excellent leaders never will be.
The challenge may instead be to become conscious enough of it to exercise it deliberately.
Because once our decisions influence people, organisations and systems, refusing to think of ourselves as powerful does not make us less powerful. It simply makes our power less examined.
So there may be a more useful question than whether you want power:
How do you inhabit the power you already have?
This post builds on an article I originally wrote in Portuguese for Executiva.
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