Conversational Leadership Across the Power Spectrum Power changes the reach of our influence, not our capacity to lead

Conversational Leadership is a practice available to anyone, whatever their position or formal authority. But power differences affect how far our influence can reach and the conditions we can shape. Thinking in terms of a power spectrum helps us recognise the power and influence available in each particular situation.

We have different degrees and different kinds of power. Some of us have substantial formal authority; others have very little. We may also have influence because of our relationships, expertise, reputation, connections, or simply the trust others place in us.

Perhaps it helps to think of this as a power spectrum. It is not a precise model, and power is rarely as simple as a single line. But it draws attention to an important distinction: what changes across the spectrum is not our capacity to practise Conversational Leadership, but the reach of our influence and our capacity to affect the wider system.

Why call it leadership?

This raises an important question. If someone with no formal authority, no leadership title, and no followers can practise Conversational Leadership, why call it leadership at all?

The answer lies in agency, responsibility, and influence. We are not simply participating in whatever conversation unfolds. When we listen carefully, ask a question that changes how an issue is understood, challenge an assumption, make room for a quieter voice, or bring people together to think, we are helping shape what happens next.

We may influence how people relate to one another, how they make sense of a situation, what possibilities they see, and ultimately how they decide to act. We do not have to be appointed as a leader, nor does anyone have to think of us as one.

In this sense, leadership is not primarily about leading other people. It is about taking some responsibility for how we think and act together.

Power changes the reach

With little formal authority, we may have little control over structures, policies, or decisions. But we can still listen differently, ask better questions, question assumptions, and respond to disagreement with curiosity rather than defensiveness. We can help create a better conversation.

Much of this happens locally and informally. A conversation with a colleague may lead to another conversation. A question in a meeting may change the direction of the discussion. A relationship built over time may make possible what formal authority alone could not achieve.

As formal authority increases, however, so does the potential reach of our actions. A team leader may be able to influence how a team meets and talks. A senior executive may be able to change decision-making processes, organizational structures, and the conditions under which thousands of conversations take place.

The practice is not necessarily more skillful or more valuable at the senior level. The difference is that authority can amplify its consequences.

Power is more than authority

Formal organizational authority is only the most obvious example of power. Conversational Leadership is not confined to organizations, and many of the situations in which we practise it have no formal hierarchy at all.

A teacher, parent, community member, citizen or friend may have considerable influence without holding any formal authority. Within organizations too, someone relatively junior may be widely trusted, have deep expertise, connect people across boundaries, or convene conversations that others cannot.

Equally, someone with substantial positional authority may discover that their title does not automatically produce trust or openness.

This is why the idea of a power spectrum has its limits. Power is contextual. It changes from relationship to relationship and situation to situation. The useful question is often not How much power do we have? but What power and influence do we have in this particular situation?

The particular opportunity of formal authority

Conversational Leadership is a practice for everyone, but people with substantial formal authority occupy a distinctive position. They have access to the same conversational practices as everyone else, but they also have a greater capacity to shape the environment in which other people converse.

They can influence who participates in important conversations, how meetings are structured, how decisions are made, how disagreement is treated, and how much autonomy others have. Their everyday behaviour also sends powerful signals. What they ask about gets noticed. What they ignore gets noticed. How they react when challenged tells others something about whether dissent is genuinely welcome.

Authority therefore amplifies conversational consequences. A dismissive response from a senior leader can close conversations far beyond the one in which it occurs. Genuine curiosity, openness to challenge and willingness to say “I don’t know” can likewise make those behaviours easier for others.

This does not make senior leaders more capable of Conversational Leadership. It means they have greater capacity to affect the wider system.

From power-over to power-with

Mary Parker Follett’s distinction between power-over and power-with becomes particularly useful here. Power-over is power exercised over others. Power-with emerges through relationship, participation, and acting together.

Conversational Leadership does not pretend that power-over can simply disappear. Organizations and societies contain real differences in authority. There are responsibilities to carry, decisions to make, and circumstances in which someone has the legitimate authority to make them.

The more interesting question is how that authority is exercised. Having power-over does not prevent us from creating power-with.

Someone with substantial authority can use it to shut down conversation, but they can also use it to create the conditions in which others have greater voice and agency. They can bring people into conversation, make disagreement legitimate, distribute responsibility and create space for collective sense-making before decisions are made.

In this sense, Conversational Leadership is not about rejecting power. It is about recognising the power we have and paying attention to how we use it.

Not a hierarchy of leadership

Talking about a power spectrum can be dangerous. It can sound as though those with greater authority are somehow practising a higher form of Conversational Leadership.

They are not. A thoughtful conversation between two friends can matter enormously. Someone with no formal authority can exercise remarkable leadership, while someone occupying the most senior position in an organization may exercise very little.

The spectrum is about differences in power and reach, not differences in the value of the practice. Conversational Leadership remains something we can all practise in our relationships with others.

Power and conversational freedom

This connects closely with the idea of working with the conversational freedom we have.

None of us has unlimited freedom. Even chief executives, political leaders and others with substantial formal authority operate within constraints. Equally, very few of us are completely without agency.

The two ideas leave us with two related questions:

Given the constraints around us, what conversational freedom do we have?

Given the power and influence available to us, what difference can we make?

Perhaps the interesting thing is not to locate ourselves permanently somewhere on a power spectrum. Our position changes with the situation.

In one conversation we may have authority. In another we may have expertise, trust, or the ability to connect people. Sometimes our influence amounts to little more than the opportunity to ask a question nobody else has asked.

That may be enough to change what happens next.