Last month, I asked a leadership team a simple question: “Who holds the most power in your organisation?”
Every answer pointed to the executive team. Yet after spending time observing their meetings and speaking with employees, I realised that the people with the greatest influence weren’t always those with the titles. That observation echoed one of the strongest themes from my doctoral research: people experience power long before they think about authority.
Power is one of the most misunderstood words in leadership. We often associate it with authority, titles, or the ability to make people comply. We picture organisational charts, executive offices, and the people who make the final decisions. But what if we’ve been defining power too narrowly?
Power isn’t something we possess. It’s something other people experience.
One conversation from my research has stayed with me ever since. A follower didn’t describe their manager as controlling or authoritarian. They simply said, “After a while, I stopped offering ideas because nobody seemed interested anyway.” That sentence changed the way I think about power. They described it in terms of whether they felt heard, respected, recognised, and safe enough to contribute honestly.
Every interaction leaves something behind. We can leave people feeling trusted or doubtful, heard or ignored, recognised or invisible, respected or diminished. Whether intentional or not, our words, decisions, and behaviour shape how others experience themselves.
This is why power extends far beyond formal authority. A leader exercises power through decisions. A colleague exercises power through encouragement or exclusion. A team exercises power through its culture. Silence can be an expression of power when it discourages others from speaking.
The moment power becomes visible
Think about a new employee who offers an idea in their first team meeting. The manager smiles, thanks them, and explores the suggestion with genuine curiosity. Whether the idea is eventually adopted is almost secondary. That employee walks away believing their contribution matters. They will probably speak again.
Now imagine the opposite. The same situation, but this time the idea is ignored. The discussion moves on without acknowledgement. Nobody intends to silence them, yet that is exactly what happens. The next time, the employee may decide it is safer to remain quiet.
Nothing about the person’s job title has changed. Yet their experience has. And that experience is what they carry forward. This is the lived experience of power.
Reflect for a moment
- Who speaks first in your meetings?
- Who speaks the most?
- Who rarely speaks?
- Who leaves the room believing that their contribution mattered?
Those answers often reveal more about organisational power than an organogram does.
Let’s bring the example home to the South African context
Consider two leaders delivering the same message. Both announce that a difficult organisational restructuring is unavoidable. One leader explains the reasons openly, answers difficult questions honestly, and treats people’s concerns with dignity. The other delivers the announcement abruptly, avoids discussion, and withdraws from the conversation.
The outcome may be identical. The experience is not.
One leaves people disappointed but respected. The other leaves people uncertain, mistrustful, and disconnected.
Power is always creating an experience for others.
Why teams matter more than we think
Although leadership plays a significant role in creating these experiences, leaders aren’t the only source of organisational power. The relational environment is collectively created through everyday interactions among colleagues, teams, and managers. In other words, power isn’t exercised only from the top down; it’s embedded in how people treat one another every day.
In many South African organisations, power is shaped not only by hierarchy but also by language, history, relationships, and cultural expectations. These influences rarely appear on an organisational chart, yet they often determine who feels able to contribute and who quietly holds back.
Importantly, this means that creating an engaging workplace is not the responsibility of leaders alone. Every team contributes to the relational climate people experience each day. This is why teams have far more power than they often realise.
Culture is rarely created by policies alone. It emerges from hundreds of small interactions between people every day. Teams decide whose opinions are welcomed, whose mistakes are forgiven, whose successes are celebrated, and who quietly becomes invisible.
A team that welcomes questions gives people confidence to contribute. A team that ridicules mistakes teaches people to protect themselves. A team that celebrates only the loudest voices gradually convinces everyone else that their perspectives are less valuable.
No policy created those experiences, but people’s everyday choices did.
What leaders can do on Monday morning
The opposite is equally true. Recognition tells people they are seen. Respect tells people they have worth. Trust tells people they are believed. Fairness tells people they belong to something just. Voice tells people their perspective has value. These experiences do more than make people feel good. They shape confidence, commitment, initiative, and the willingness to contribute beyond what is required.
This week, try one simple experiment: before ending a meeting, ask, “What perspective have we not heard yet?” Then wait long enough for someone quieter to answer.
The question that changes everything
Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “Who has power?”, We should be asking, “What kind of experience does my power create for others?” Because every one of us influences someone else’s working day. Managers influence teams. Teams influence colleagues. Experienced employees influence newcomers. Informal leaders often shape culture as much as formal leaders do. Power isn’t confined to the top of an organisation. It exists wherever one person’s behaviour shapes another person’s experience.
Power that relies on authority may achieve compliance. Power that builds trust, affirms dignity, and creates belonging inspires commitment.
A closing thought
In the end, the true measure of power isn’t how many people follow you, but how many people leave your presence believing that they matter. And perhaps the most revealing leadership question is not, “How much power do I have?” but, “Who left my last meeting feeling more willing to contribute because they encountered me?” That answer may tell you more about your leadership than any title ever will.
At 4Seeds Consulting, we help leaders and teams build cultures where challenge, curiosity, and respectful dialogue become strengths rather than risks. When people feel safe to contribute honestly, organisations gain more than better conversations; they gain better decisions.
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