The Field Guide › Article
Steep power gradients are framed here as the single biggest inhibitor of psychological safety, and addressing them as one of the first things to do to improve it. The gradient goes by many names across fields — power differential, authority gradient, cross-cockpit authority gradient, power distance, status asymmetry. The article sets out four accessible, actionable categories of power: formal (positional — structures, hierarchies, rules), informal (social — networks, reputation, popularity), demographic (gender, race, age, sexuality — the power we did nothing to earn), and expert (knowledge and experience, which only works as power when others acknowledge it). These are adapted from French and Raven's bases of power alongside Galbraith, Mary Parker Follett, and Deborah Cameron's work on privilege and 'unmarked' identities. The types are not independent — they interact, compensate, and dangerously stack, so the real power in an organisation rarely matches the formal org chart. Introduces 'power literacy': without language to talk about power, we can find ourselves powerless to address inequity. Naming each type opens different interventions — restructuring to flatten formal gradients, acknowledging and mitigating informal and demographic power by amplifying other voices, and making use of expertise while guarding its silencing effect on junior voices. Power begets power, which is why organisations need guardrails against its over-accumulation.