Editors’ Note: On November 13, join NPQ Leading Edge and strategic leader Karla Monterroso to discuss the seven levers of power. Register now.
We are in the middle of a massive power struggle.
Not just in our political or economic arenas, but also within our organizations. This power struggle rears its head daily, making our work and our existence fragile. We often miss, ignore, or downplay this power struggle because we’ve spent so much time as leaders talking about how to get power. So once we arrive, we expect things to fall into place. But we rarely ask the harder question: What happens when we get it?
Far too many of us as leaders don’t have an answer. Despite our work reimagining ways to structure our communities and society, we often think of power as binary: You either have it, or you don’t. And having it often looks like someone who gets the big title, the big budget, the big platform, and the assumption that they now have infinite capacity to make change. With this power, many of us lean on “best practices” that often encourage us to hoard power and even view peers and colleagues with suspicion.
Despite our work reimagining ways to structure our communities and society, we often think of power as binary.
But power, defined by activist and writer Alicia Garza in her book The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart is “the ability to make decisions that affect your own life and the lives of others, the freedom to shape and determine the story of who we are…and having the ability to reward and punish and decide how resources are distributed.”
Power is actually much more situational. It’s a kaleidoscope instead of a telescope.
Over the years, I’ve worked with leaders of multiracial, multicultural organizations that reflect the demographic future of our democracy. These institutions are made up of least 20 percent Black, Indigenous, Asian, and/or Latine people and 40 percent women and femmes at every level of leadership. With this insight, I’ve come to see that power isn’t a single source to be captured but rather a set of levers we learn to access, share, and wield with care.
The Seven Levers of Power
Across sectors, I’ve observed seven key levers of power that determine whether institutions thrive, stagnate, or implode. Together, they form a practical framework for leaders building healthy, democratic organizations in a time of division and change.
- Money
Money doesn’t just equal power, it equals options. Within organizations, the question isn’t simply who has the biggest budget, but who controls which kinds of money and for what purposes. The type of funding you can access determines the kind of risk and innovation your organization can afford.
Ask yourself: What kinds of money do I have access to and what kinds don’t I?
- Information
The internet has made access to information far easier—whether it is access to laws about how to manage and govern organizations, 990s, or learning more about the unionization process. It is no wonder that access to information is one of the most common bottlenecks in any institution. Sometimes information is guarded for ethical or legal reasons; other times, out of habit or fear. When information doesn’t flow, neither can trust, creativity, or accountability.
Ask yourself: What motivates how we share or withhold information, and does that motivation still make sense?
When information doesn’t flow, neither can trust, creativity, or accountability.
- Access to Decision Makers
In most organizations, power can be mapped by calendars: Who’s on the CEO’s schedule? How time is distributed reflects how value and trust are distributed. Access, or the lack of it, shapes which voices influence key choices.
Ask yourself: How much time do I spend with the people I formally lead, and how much time do I give to those who informally lead me?
- Decision-Making Rights
At its core, power is the ability to make choices. It’s the lever we use to reach all other levers. Whether it’s choosing which clients to take, what priorities to pursue, or what risks to absorb, decision-making rights define where real authority lives.
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Ask yourself: Where are decisions made in my organization, and are those the right places?
- Access to an Audience
Social media has transformed this lever more than any other. The ability to reach an audience can elevate or undermine entire institutions overnight. Within your organization, whose stories get told and who tells them?
Ask yourself: Which megaphones tell our story, and who doesn’t have one?
- Self-Awareness
We often treat emotional intelligence as a soft skill, but self-awareness is one of the most potent levers of power. It allows leaders to choose their reactions rather than be ruled by them. Systems that assume everyone already has this capacity risk punishing people for being human.
Ask yourself: Do our processes make room for growth, or do they only reward those already fluent in self-control?
- Community
When all other levers are blocked, collective action remains the most enduring source of power. Community is how marginalized groups have historically changed systems. But within institutions, belonging can also be weaponized. People may fear that challenging the group will cost them their place in it.
Ask yourself: What is my community asking of me, and what does belonging cost here?
We often treat emotional intelligence as a soft skill, but self-awareness is one of the most potent levers of power. It allows leaders to choose their reactions rather than be ruled by them.
From Hoarding to Sharing
Understanding these levers helps us diagnose where power is being hoarded, obscured, or misused, and where interventions can be designed to move toward equity.
In multiracial, multicultural institutions, this work is especially urgent. These organizations are microcosms of our democratic experiment: the more diverse our teams become, the more skill it takes to share power across differences.
The leaders who succeed in this era won’t be those who cling to control, but those who learn to see power as fluid and situational, something to be exercised consciously and shared strategically.
It’s important to remember that power doesn’t corrupt on its own. What corrupts is confusion, when we don’t understand how power works or where it sits. What corrupts is our inability to admit when we have power. What corrupts is our tendency to treat power like a binary set of choices. When we can name the levers, we can move them with intention.
Join the Conversation
This framework is the foundation for my upcoming NPQ Leading Edge webinar, “Seizing and Sharing Power: Seven Critical Levers for Today’s Leaders,” on Thursday, November 13.
Together, we’ll focus on four levers most pressing to nonprofits today:
- Money
- Information
- Access to decision makers
- Decision-making rights
We’ll explore how executives and senior staff can put these insights into practice, building institutions resilient enough to withstand authoritarian backlash, inequity, and division. And in the new year, we’ll continue the conversation in a series of articles going deeper into those four levers, ensuring we’re ready to examine power in the midst of change.
Because at the end of the day, our organizations aren’t just workplaces; they are practice fields for democracy. How we share power inside them will shape what’s possible far beyond their walls.
