Authority and Structures of Power
In any power structure, there are two primary dynamics at play to hold the structure together: delegation and coercion.
We typically think of delegation as flowing downhill: a manager delegates some responsibility to someone beneath them in order to focus on other responsibilities. This type of delegation may be how the organization functions, but it’s not what defines the structure itself.
Delegation flowing uphill is one of the two dynamics that define the power structure and hold it together: as a member of the organization, I will delegate some of my autonomy to my boss so that I can focus on my other responsibilities (by autonomy, I mean specifically some share of the decision making that is involved in the functioning of the organization). This delegation is one of the two things that can define my boss as such, and thus define this one leg of the power structure.
The other is coercion; if I haven’t willfully chosen to delegate some of my autonomy to my manager, then I have given it up under threat: threat of violence, loss, or some other form of punishment.
An autocrat defines the power structure they wield based on coercion: their generals, lieutenants, soldiers, and civilians obey because they fear the punishment that is expected to come from disobedience. The power structure itself serves as an amplifier for this coercive force as the autocrat uses downward delegation to expand the scope of their abilities not only to inflict punishment but also to expose disobedience.
The role of a democratic representative, on the other hand, is defined by upward delegation: as citizens, we chose someone to make good decisions on our behalf, to dedicate time and effort to understanding problems and developing solutions for them so that we don’t have to. The democratic representative derives their authority from the trust their citizens place in them.
The authority of the democratic representative is granted to them by their citizens and can be taken away by the same. Any given leg of a power structure defined by upward delegation may be tenuous, but the overall structure can be stable and long-lived.
History shows us that a power structure defined by coercion, on the other hand, may be rigid in the very short term as the authority it imposes places itself beyond question; but in the longer term these power structures rarely last and frequently fall apart catastrophically.
In the professional world, most organizations will have a power structure defined by a combination of both coercion and upward delegation, though we frequently fail to recognize either dynamic. Many of us go through our professional lives answering to our bosses, to varying degrees, without thinking about why we answer to them; they are the boss, they are in charge, we do what they say, as though it is the natural order of things. But by what authority?
Outside of a military organization, where the scope of coercive authority is much broader than in the civilian world, your bosses have the legitimized power to do at most two things to you: affect your pay, and terminate your job. Any other authority they hold over you is authority that they have assumed and you have granted.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: upward delegation allows a plurality of people to offload work to a single person; it’s a form of specialization that not only allows the plurality to focus on other work, but also allows the delegate to be more dedicated to understanding the context for their decisions than someone with divided attention would be able to.
Although the assumed authority of upward delegation is not necessarily a bad thing, it is important to understand that this is all it is. Your boss has no power over you beyond what you allow them to have: any additional authority they try to exercise is coercive in nature, deriving from their ability to punish you by affecting your pay or your continued employment.
Awareness of the nature of authority in your organization is important because coercive power structures rarely have long term effectiveness, and the application of coercion is generally detrimental to the overall organization and its mission. Fear of punishment will typically only motivate individuals to deliver the minimum amount of value necessary to avoid punishment. Further detracting from the effectiveness of the organization, a coercive environment will encourage individuals to expend their efforts protecting and insulating themselves from punishment, even to the point of undermining other members of the organization.
The modern professional world typically holds the coercive nature of its power dynamics close to its chest: most people won’t be threatened with termination or demotion for questioning their boss. Most bosses won’t take a “do this or else” approach to management. None the less, when authority is taken as a given; when bosses at any level act as though their authority is granted to them from a higher authority, rather than from the people beneath them in the organization; when members of the organization forget that the authority they delegate upward cannot effectively extend any further than the trust they hold in that delegate; the coercive forces of the power structure are the ones in evidence; left unchecked, they will set the tone and the expectation for the entire organization.
Managers who make demands, issue commands, who lay down the law, or act opaquely, are leaning heavily on their authority, suggesting that it is unshakable, that it is theirs by right, rather than by the grant of those beneath them. While explicit threats are pretty rare in the professional world, the attitude implies coercive authority, whose power comes only through a threat of punishment: any expression of owning authority contains an implicit threat.
To avoid any such implication and to keep the coercive dynamics of power in check, managers should downplay any suggestion of authority. The proper tone for a delegate is collaborative; the only non-coercive rationale for their position is to aid their team in pursuit of the organization’s goals; if the team doesn’t trust their manager to do that, there’s no reason for that manager to still have authority that doesn’t imply a threat.
Every position of authority comes with a Sword of Damocles. A fearful person will attempt to maintain and strengthen their authority by wielding it against those beneath them, never realizing there is an endless supply of swords dangling above. A wise person will forget the sword and focus on their job, understanding that authority comes from trust.
