Power Is Given. What You Do With It Isn’t.
Here are four ways leverage arrives:
- You’re the customer someone else depends on.
- You sit in the executive chair.
- You hold specialist knowledge nobody else in the room has.
- You control a product or service nobody else can offer.
Land in any one of these positions and leverage comes with it, whether you asked for it or not, whether you’ve noticed it or not. Leverage isn’t the exception in organisational life. It’s a constant, quietly attached to certain seats.
The question was never whether you have it. It’s what you do with it. There are two directions available. You can use it to your advantage — bully with it, benefit yourself with it, exploit whoever’s on the other side of it.
Or you can use it to serve — putting the higher good first, and taking yourself out of the equation.
Same leverage, same seat, opposite outcomes. Nothing about the position decides which one you choose.
Under the influence of power, we’re often blind to which direction we’re actually pointed in. We live in illusions of our own making, and we satisfy ourselves with narratives that flatter the choice we’ve already made. Nobody sits down and decides to exploit their position. They arrive there one reasonable-sounding justification at a time, each one self-satisfying enough that the drift never announces itself.
What would help is slowing down long enough to ask the question directly. Who am I really serving? What benefit does the organisation actually get from my fuss? Who am I serving among my own people? Who am I making things easier for? These aren’t rhetorical. They’re the only check available, because nothing external forces the answer — the seat gives you the leverage either way.
Power and influence is given. What we do with it matters the most. So the next time you notice leverage sitting in your hands — the customer relationship, the title, the expertise nobody else has, the thing nobody else can supply — has anyone actually stopped to ask which direction it’s pointed?
