Power isn't optional

If you shape priorities, allocate attention, set standards, influence outcomes or decide what gets ignored, then you're already exercising power. This is true whether or not you use the word, and it's also true whether or not you like it... It's true whether or not your job title mentions leadership - leadership isn't just about management.

Power is not something you either have or don’t have, emerging wherever coordination, hierarchy or influence exist. The only real choice is whether you acknowledge it or pretend it's not there.

The problem with pretending you have no power

Many people deny power because they associate it with domination, abuse or ego. They want to be ethical, fair and humane, so they step back from actively acknowledging their influence.

However, when power is denied, it doesn't vanish, but leaks away, often in predictable ways:

  • through silence instead of decisions,
  • through mood instead of policy,
  • through favourites instead of principles,
  • and/or through inconsistency instead of boundaries.

None of this feels like power to the individual doing it, but to everybody else it feels arbitrary, unstable and quietly coercive.

Invisible power is the hardest to challenge

When power is explicit, it can be discussed, negotiated and resisted, but when it's denied, it becomes harder to identify without sounding paranoid or confrontational.

People start asking themselves things like:

  • "Why does this person get away with things others don't?"
  • "Why does the atmosphere change depending on who's in the room?"
  • "Why do the rules feel different week to week?"

At that point, the system has become more opaque, and not more ethical.

Ethical leadership is not powerlessness

Ethical leadership does not mean turning a blind eye to power, but taking responsibility for it.

This includes:

  • owning the influence you actually have.
  • making expectations legible rather than implied.
  • using authority sparingly but deliberately.
  • ensuring power serves clarity and not ego.

Power becomes dangerous when exercised unconsciously, and not when it is merely acknowledged.

The difference between clean and unclean power

Clean power is visible, bounded and consistent. People may not always like it, but they can understand it.

Unclean power is inconsistent, emotional or indirect. It keeps people guessing, performing and second-guessing themselves.

The irony is that many leaders who try hardest to avoid power end up practising the unclean version of it, simply because they refuse to name what's already happening.

Why this matters for trust

People trust systems they can read, but They don't trust systems that need constant interpretation. When power is owned cleanly:

  • decisions make sense even when they disappoint,
  • boundaries feel protective rather than arbitrary, and
  • conflict stays contained instead of leaking sideways.

When it's denied, trust erodes quietly through fatigue (and not necessarily through drama).

Owning power without becoming domineering

Owning power does not need you to be loud, aggressive or charismatic, but it requires willingness...

Willingness to be clear.

Willingness to be seen accurately.

Willingness to accept that leadership includes being the man who names reality early, rather than the one who preserves comfort at all costs.

Closing thought

Power will exist whether you acknowledge it or not. The ethical question is whether you are willing to take responsibility for how it operates through you, and not whether or not you have it.

Turning a blind eye to power doesn't make you virtuous, but owning it carefully might.