Seeing Clearly
- katrincharlton
- Jan 6
- 6 min read
On influence, power, and what we politely refuse to name
I've been circling this topic for a long time.
Not because it isn't important - quite the opposite. Because every time I tried to write about it, the result felt too neat. Too binary. As if it missed the lived messiness of what leaders actually describe to me, again and again, behind closed doors.
It took a lot of listening to work out why.
This isn't really about behaviour. It's about what happens when the rules you relied on quietly stop working - and nobody tells you.
Quiet Helplessness
The moment effort stops being the answer.
I spent fifteen years in financial services before I ever coached anyone - investor relations, raising capital for hedge funds. I learned early that the deck often mattered less than the dinner. Decisions were confirmed in meetings, but shaped in the conversations before them.
Even knowing that, there was a period in my own career when I felt genuinely helpless at work.
I worked hard. I prepared thoroughly. I delivered what was asked - often more. And still, the important conversations happened without me. Decisions landed elsewhere. Outcomes didn't track effort.
What unsettled me wasn't the result. It was the question underneath it:
If this is how things work, do I have to become someone I'm not in order to belong here?
That question rarely surfaces when life is stable. It arrives when something familiar is ending and what comes next hasn't formed yet. If you're asking it right now, you're not behind. You're paying attention.
Naming Matters
Why I won't call this "office politics".
You'll notice I'm avoiding the term office politics. That's deliberate.
For some, the phrase is mildly distasteful. For others, it's attached to experiences that were genuinely harmful - manipulation, exclusion, misuse of power. Either way, the label shuts down thinking before it starts.
So let's call it what it is: organisational dynamics. The informal ways influence flows, decisions get shaped, and culture reinforces itself alongside the org chart.
The distinction isn't cosmetic.
You can't navigate what you refuse to see.
Naming dynamics isn't excusing behaviour. It's understanding the system you're standing in - especially when your old assumptions about how it works have quietly expired.
Genuinely Hard
When it's the system under strain, not you.
Let me say this plainly: for some people, navigating these dynamics isn't just challenging. It's draining. Sometimes deeply unsettling.
Especially where transparency is inconsistent. Where trust has been eroded. Where speaking up carries risk. Where the values on the wall and the behaviour in the room don't match.
Anyone holding responsibility for people and culture - HR among them - tends to sit precisely in that gap, with pressure arriving from every direction at once.
If that's you: this is rarely a resilience deficit. More often, it means the system itself is under strain. And not everything can - or should - be solved by trying harder.
Daylight Test
The behaviours can look identical. The difference is whether they'd survive the light.
Here's where it gets uncomfortable.
From the outside, healthy influence and manipulation can look exactly the same. Aligning stakeholders before the meeting. Building relationships with the people who decide. Choosing carefully what you share, and when.
Healthy influence or hidden agenda? You can't tell from the behaviour alone.
The test that separates them is simple: would it survive being done in the open?
Trust built through consistency survives daylight. So do transparent decisions, even when the outcome stings. So does visibility of contribution without performance theatre, and power exercised in service of people and purpose. Many leaders practise this every day - quietly, and without applause.
Hidden agendas, by definition, don't survive it. Neither does fear-driven compliance, challenge that gets silenced, or success measured by control rather than impact.
Those aren't interpersonal quirks to "manage around". They're indicators of cultural risk. And they are never the responsibility of the person on the receiving end.
Clean Hands
The integrity strategy that quietly backfires.
Many thoughtful people carry an unspoken belief: if I stay out of all this, I'll protect my integrity.
I understand it. I held it myself.
But influence flows whether we participate or not - through relationships, trust, credibility. Opting out doesn't remove you from the system. It just removes your voice from it. And in periods of change or transition, informal dynamics don't fade. They intensify.
So the real question isn't whether to engage.
It's how - and at what cost to yourself and others.
That's not politics. That's maturity.
Both Directions
The mirror is the harder half of this work.
One more uncomfortable turn - and if you lead at a senior level, this one is yours.
The dynamics you resent navigating upward, you may be generating downward without noticing. The corridor conversation that saves you twenty minutes teaches your team that decisions happen somewhere they aren't. The pre-meeting where things get "aligned" tells everyone else the actual meeting is theatre.
None of this makes you manipulative. It makes you senior, in a system that rewards speed and access. Influence concentrates around seniority the way water finds a slope - it's the pattern, not a character flaw.
But the daylight test applies in both directions. And the people below you are running it on you constantly, whether you know it or not.
Nervous Systems
Why this costs more than energy.
Extended exposure to unhealthy dynamics affects more than performance.
When an environment is unpredictable or misaligned with your values, the nervous system does exactly what it was built to do: it protects. Vigilance rises. Thinking narrows and turns reactive. Energy that could create clarity gets spent monitoring risk instead.
That's not weakness. That's biology under sustained uncertainty.
Understanding this separates personal capacity from systemic pressure - and explains why "just push through" so rarely works. Often the real work isn't to push at all. It's to pause, regulate, and choose - deliberately - how you want to engage.
Conscious Engagement
Awareness, not armour - and a price worth naming.
This work isn't about playing the game. It isn't about growing a thicker skin or becoming more political.
It's about seeing.
Recognising what is - and isn't - within your remit. Naming patterns without personalising them. Setting boundaries around what you'll engage with. Knowing when to act, when to pause, when to step back entirely.
Sometimes the most responsible move isn't adaptation.
It's clarity - so you can choose how to act with integrity.
And clarity has a cost. Seeing the system as it actually is tends to leave three honest options: work to change it, accept it as it is, or leave it. Two of those are expensive, and pretending otherwise would be unkind. But there's a world of difference between paying that price knowingly and paying it by default.
That choice matters most in transition, when the old rules no longer apply and the new ones haven't yet formed.
Questions to sit with
Where in your work are you being asked to see more clearly, rather than simply try harder?
Which of these dynamics might your own team say you generate - and would they feel able to tell you?
If clarity pointed to change it, accept it, or leave it - which of the three are you avoiding putting a price on?
A deeper dive
These reflections are shaped by lived experience, coaching conversations, and research into how influence and power actually work in organisations - especially during change. If you want to go further:
Power for All - Julie Battilana & Tiziana Casciaro. Power reframed as relational and systemic rather than positional. Useful language for influence that doesn't glorify dominance.
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader - Herminia Ibarra. Clarity emerges through action and experimentation, not before it. Especially relevant mid-transition.
Managing with Power - Jeffrey Pfeffer. Pragmatic, occasionally uncomfortable, and honest about how influence really works. Read it to understand the terrain, not to idealise it.
If this landed - particularly if you're navigating a stretch where things feel less certain or more complex - you don't have to think it through alone. A confidential coaching conversation can help you regain perspective and decide how you want to engage next, with integrity and intention.
For more reflections like this, straight to your inbox: The Nous Letter.
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