A few weeks ago, in an article I wrote about power, The Power Playbook: The Three Faces of Power, the insights of the political scientist Steven Lukes were discussed. He had argued that power operates at three levels: visible, agenda-setting, and ideological. In this framework, it’s not just who wins the debate that matters, but who decides what gets discussed and, ultimately, what people believe is even possible.
This is very much a layered understanding of power, and what it reveals is that authority and influence are rarely the same thing. The org chart might show who’s in charge, but it doesn’t explain why certain ideas still thrive while others die quietly in the meeting notes, never to be seen again. Moreover, the org chart fails to show who really shapes culture or how people actually internalise norms.
To build on those ideas, it is useful to consider that power, ultimately, is more about participation and connection than coercion. If we look at political theory or the literature on the corporate world, the most enduring forms of power tend to be relational rather than hierarchical. That is to say, they depend most of all on trust, alignment, and a sense of a shared purpose.
The Political World
In classical political thought, power was most often seen in terms of domination and hierarchy. Thomas Hobbes had described it as the ability to impose one’s will. For Hobbes, the sovereign’s monopoly on coercion was deemed necessary to prevent chaos. But over time, political thought evolved to reveal that power operates in much more subtle ways. Hannah Arendt, for example, has made the argument that “power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert”. The idea here is that power arises whenever people come together around a shared purpose. In other words, it is relational and collective, not coercive or owned.
Michel Foucault deepened this insight by showing that power is everywhere, embedded in relationships, language, and institutions. It produces possibilities, shaping what people see as normal, rational, or legitimate. Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony offered a complementary power lens to this, where in his view, dominance is maintained not only through force or policy, but also by shaping the narratives people accept as “common sense”, a phrase that is frequently used in political discourse today.
Nowhere is this relational and cultural dimension of power more visible than in political leadership practice. Just think of South Africa’s former president, Nelson Mandela, who understood power as both connection and moral authority rather than command. In the new South Africa that he led, the prioritisation was on inclusion. Despite everything that went before, his leadership brought former adversaries into dialogue and framed reconciliation as a shared national project. Mandela’s approach in many ways exemplifies Foucault’s idea of relational power and Gramsci’s cultural framing, by replacing fear and domination with participation and legitimacy.
This distinction between domination and legitimacy runs deep in international relations. Max Weber had emphasised that authority, the stable form of power, depends on legitimacy. Without that relational dimension, power just devolves into mere force. Probably the best example of this was the fall of the Soviet Union, which was not so much a military defeat as a collapse of legitimacy. Its own people no longer believed in its inefficient command system.
A foundational concept for understanding this dynamic is Joseph Nye’s idea of “soft power”. Nations do not exert influence just through coercion (hard power) or payments (economic power); they also shape the preferences of others through the softer powers of attraction and connection. The United States’ global influence has, for decades, rested just as much on its cultural and institutional appeal as on its extensive military reach. Just think of the influence of Hollywood or its legal and governance system, and how they have influenced other countries around the world. A rising China, in turn, seeks to cultivate its own soft power through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, blending financial leverage with relational diplomacy, though sometimes not without tension when connection turns into accusations of dependence, demonstrating the difficulty of converting economic strength into genuine soft power.
The same principle applies in economics. Markets, at their core, are really networks of trust. After all, money is only as powerful as the belief that others have in it. Financial markets function because of confidence rather than coercion. When trust is gone, confidence collapses. This was demonstrated during the 2008 financial crisis. In short, the real power behind markets, as in politics, is less about command and more about connection.
The Business World
In the business world, as is the case in the political world, power is often presumed to be synonymous with hierarchy. The traditional corporate pyramid, with the CEO commanding from the top, the managers controlling from the middle, and the employees executing at the bottom, in many ways mirrors the old sovereign model of power. While this is often the default position, modern organisational theory and management practice have evolved to show that sustainable power comes from networks.
Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, made this shift explicit. His idea of the “learning organisation” reframed companies as living systems of interdependence, where influence arises through feedback loops, shared learning, and alignment rather than control. In complex systems, command-and-control authority breaks down because the system adapts faster than any one leader can dictate. Real leadership, therefore, is about enabling participation and orchestrating meaning across the network.
This way of seeing power also appears in organisational psychology through the Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) theory, which shows that a leader’s effectiveness depends less on formal authority and more on the quality of their relationships. It is high-quality exchanges that are built on trust, respect, and mutual influence that foster engagement, innovation, and commitment. So, power, in this sense, should be understood as more of a shared resource than a private possession that should be captured, guarded tightly and used vertically.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s work on organisational power reinforces this point by showing that power is the ability to mobilise resources and empower people to accomplish goals. It’s not title or status, but access to information, allies, and credibility that determines who has real influence. Power flows to those who connect across boundaries, enable others, and build coalitions of participation.
Today’s most adaptive organisations reflect this shift. I have written before about how Satya Nadella transformed the culture at Microsoft. His transformation from a “know-it-all” to a “learn-it-all” culture was, at its core, a redefinition of power. It moved the company from a command-and-control mindset to one built on empathy, listening, and shared learning. Likewise, the most effective leaders these days are those who cultivate psychological safety by creating a space where others feel empowered to openly speak and contribute rather than sit quietly and listen to those who dominate meetings or issue diktats.
Even corporate governance is evolving in this direction. Stakeholder capitalism, for all its many critics, reflects the growing recognition that legitimacy in business mirrors the role of legitimacy in politics in that it depends on broader participation and trust. Power in business today rests not only with its owners, the shareholders, but also with those who make the business a success: its employees, consumers, regulators, and communities. The most successful firms create value through the strength of their connections, both internal and external.
Systems and the Flow of Power
If we view our organisations and societies through a systems lens, then power looks less like a pyramid and more like a network. Every political or business connection we have carries potential influence, and every relationship either amplifies or dampens the flow of energy in that network.
Power becomes a key property of the whole system. Any attempts to centralise it may bring about some short-term compliance (which is sometimes necessary), but also run the risk of long-term fragility. Power is inherently elusive. It helps drive progress, but when abused or hoarded, it can quickly be taken away. In contrast, participation distributes power, generating feedback, innovation, and resilience.
This helps explain why many transformations fail when they rely only on what Steven Lukes called visible power (the top-down mandate) while neglecting agenda and ideological power (who shapes priorities, who defines what’s “normal”). Lasting change requires rebalancing the entire system, that is to say, aligning structures, narratives, and relationships.
The fast-moving business environment of the 21st century requires leadership that is adapted to that environment. Waiting for decisions to travel up and down a pyramid has become a fatal disadvantage. Resilient networks can adapt locally and rapidly. In this sense, the most powerful leaders are able to act as architects of participation. They design the spaces, physical or nonphysical, where people can make a contribution, influence, and co-create meaning.
In many of today’s growth industries, there is a war for talent. Knowledge workers are not motivated by compliance. They are energised by meaning, contribution, and co-creation. Moreover, innovation rarely happens in isolation, but emerges from the cross-pollination of ideas across networks.
From this perspective, power becomes less about giving orders and more about creating the conditions where people can connect and create something special. In short, resilient organisations recognise that power isn’t a fixed stock in a zero-sum game, but a dynamic flow that strengthens as it circulates.
What This Means
So what does all this mean in practice then? Why is this information useful?
For political leaders, it means that legitimacy now depends more on dialogue than on decree. Mandela was one of the great political leaders of the 20th century, and his legacy reminds us that moral connection outlasts control. Authority built through inclusion endures far longer than fear ever can. It is only when we lose sight of this that progress starts to backtrack.
The same logic applies to governance today. Real influence flows through the ability to bring people together, not just tell them what to do. For citizens, it’s a reminder that power is collective. Social movements, digital activism, and community organising all point to what Foucault meant when he said power circulates everywhere. So the real question is not so much who holds power?, rather, it is more a question of how do we connect it?
The business world follows a similar pattern. Power weakens in isolation but multiplies through connection. Leaders today need to move beyond traditional command-and-control toward more evolved cultures built on trust, learning, and participation. Real influence comes from relationships and shared purpose. Employees gain power through participation, not by asking for permission. And customers now tend to value belonging over just purchasing a product or service. The strongest brands already understand this and invite people to be part of their story rather than just their order book.
The Power of Connection
In the political world and the business world, the pattern is the same: real power is less about control and more about connection. The most successful leaders of the future will most likely be those who understand that power is not something to capture and hold, but rather something you host by designing the conditions for participation. Because in the end, despite popular belief, power isn’t a trophy. It’s a network that leaders should nurture.