On Leadership in a Corporate Power Hierarchy

Table of contents

Introduction
Espoused and attributed beliefs
Managerial behavioral dynamics
It has to cost them: how meaningful change happens
Loyalty
Implications for leaders
References

Introduction

This article explores the power dynamics within a corporate hierarchy and offers suggestions for aspiring leaders. It takes a very pragmatic view and was inspired by books (cited throughout), conversations with current and former corporate employees across industries and the working age range, and my own development as a leader.

To understand how corporations in a capitalist system operate, you have to look to the bottom-line incentives: money and power. These are businesses and their bottom line is turning a profit. To function efficiently, they have to maintain order within their ranks. Employees at different levels of the power hierarchy must therefore align themselves with management above them. The article concludes with implications for leaders.

Espoused and attributed beliefs

There is always a dichotomy between espoused and attributed beliefs at play [1].

So-called ”espoused beliefs” are what management/spokespersons for the company openly say underpin the company’s values. The inward-directed narratives are tuned to maintain the company’s image among employees in an effort to keep them psychologically satisfied and productive. The outward narrative cultivates the company’s public image. These are at best aspirational but first and foremost a marketing machine. For example, “it's safe to fail here” or “we are committed to being at the forefront of a green future”.

Entirely separate from espoused beliefs are what we can call “attributed beliefs”. These are the values that emerge when espoused beliefs are challenged.

The dichotomy follows some predictable dialogic patterns of which the following are just two examples.

Pattern 1

Manager: As always, please don’t hesitate to bring concerns you might have to our attention.

Employee: Here’s a concern that has been bothering me…

Manager: It’s not appropriate for you to comment on that. Just focus on your work.

Pattern 2

Employee: I’ve been driving this effort to develop our workplace culture.

Manager: We think everything you’re doing with that is great. Keep up the good work!

Employee: I could have more impact if I had formal leadership responsibilities.

Manager: Well, we haven’t seen you show leadership yet.

Confusing at first, but explainable. We’ve stumbled upon a mismatch between espoused and attributed beliefs. It may be an unknown unknown to some who implement them. Or otherwise managers ignore the hypocrisy of their own messaging so as to not suffer from distracting cognitive dissonance. Some elements of psychopathy help tremendously to maintain these contradictions, incentivizing leaders to empower employees with these qualities who will enthusiastically read from management’s script [2].

Discussion of pattern 1

The first pattern is a “we didn’t hire you for that” scenario. Your concern may have a direct and significant impact on your (and others’) ability to do your job. But management doesn’t want to look bad by validating it, nor do they want to have to do the work, especially if it means confronting another manager who they want to stay in good favor with. If it’s something that would reflect poorly on them within the organization, they may choose to at least partially bury it to protect their reputation, gaslighting you in the process, and hoping that the issue doesn’t recur.

Along the same lines, if the concern affects you but it doesn’t seem like you’ll quit over it or make a fuss, there’s no concrete incentive for management to act. This is why employees with visa or other constraints are so disempowered during organizational conflicts. If you’re lucky, they will do the politically correct thing: tell you nice things to calm you down and then simply move on. There is no meaningful cost to them otherwise, so they chose the “efficient” option for handling the situation. The default response is always to protect the company’s power and money.

Discussion of pattern 2

The second pattern is an example of “do the right thing for intrinsic reward”. When the company says they support change leaders or initiatives to improve culture but act as though such activities are extracurricular, it communicates that they don’t actually care about any of it.

In their eyes, you are doing work for free, which they’ll happily support with nice words and plenty of encouragement. If they actually cared, they would invest in it and the people who are driving those efforts, supporting them with the same extrinsic rewards that those who focus on the company’s bottom line enjoy.

It indicates that the company doesn’t care about it, even if they say they do, even if they have publicly stated goals around such activities. Their actions (around power and money) reveal their core values, not their words.

Dichotomy of belief systems

This is the harsh reality of the dichotomy between espoused and attributed beliefs. Seemingly strange responses from management to events on the ground suddenly make sense when we remember that this dual belief system is at play at all times. So don’t believe what you’re told. Believe what happens.

Managerial behavioral dynamics

Three dynamics that managers within a reporting structure may exhibit are:

1. Abrasive up, reasonable down
2. Followership up, benevolent dictatorship down
3. Submissive up, coercive down

First dynamic: abrasive up, reasonable down

The thinking goes like this. In order for employees to get their needs met, they must be able to easily pass information from the ground floor of the hierarchy upwards. Managers are then responsible for addressing those needs in a supportive way so that their subordinates can feel free to do their best work. This philosophy encourages managers to see their subordinates as customers of the service of leadership that they are providing.

Cue a reference to the prisoner’s dilemma. This only works if everyone in the reporting chain acts out a service mindset in a disciplined way, which is extremely unlikely in a hierarchy with even two layers. This is why it’s primarily a theoretical dynamic. If it ever does exist, it is only in relatively short-lived pockets that sublimate into a variant of the second dynamic at the first sign of real-world constraints such as budget, productive output, or political convenience.

Second dynamic: followership up, benevolent dictatorship down

The second dynamic is the realistic standard. As good as it gets. It starts with accepting that a corporation’s sole purpose is to create profit by its leaders for its primary stakeholders (e.g. investors). This requires that it protect its power and reputation. Executives choose the direction and everyone under them follows the principle of “commander’s intent”. This means that a leader states their objectives and subordinates then find ways to accomplish them, allowing the leader to focus on higher-level decision-making.

That of course requires a minimum amount of competency and communication trust [3]. And it implies a particular kind of subordination known as followership [4]. If everyone obeys and implements their orders, managers can then “do right” by their subordinates. Every manager is a benevolent dictator to those working under them.

Those who are insubordinate are expelled partially or completely from the organization for not practicing sufficient followership. This is a logical, self-consistent system that helps managers sleep at night who need to do the dirty work of disciplining, firing, and restructuring. It’s all for the good of the company.

Third dynamic: submissive up, coercive down

What happens when a toxic individual gets into power? Toxic meaning that they are not benevolent in applying an authoritative leadership style, but rather use coercive methods [5]. In this case, their subordinates must subordinate themselves more fully. This could take many forms including:

• Leaving no space for discussion around decisions
• Burying concerns
• Ignoring feedback
• Siloing important information
• Playing favorites
• Cutting off a subordinate’s access to opportunities
• Tarnishing a subordinate’s reputation
• Outright emotional abuse or intimidation

It’s amazing how it can only take a single asshole to poison a group’s culture [6]. The coercive style comes naturally to narcissists [7]. It is also known to be the least effective of the six styles described in Daniel Goleman’s book on the subject. And yet, it is used surprisingly often in the face of threat to managers’ egos or the company’s bottom line. If such is the culture of the organization, it can be challenging to effect change from the bottom up. Information simply doesn't travel upwards.

It has to cost them: how meaningful change happens

Let’s say you experience too much of the third dynamic and want to influence change towards the second dynamic. For an organizational culture to change, not changing has to cost significantly more. This is a fundamental principle and is true of individuals and organizations alike.

George Carlin put it nicely when describing drug and alcohol addiction [8]:

When did the FBI come under focused scrutiny around its illegal domestic operations? When it was discovered that it directed the drugging and murder of Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old chairman of the Black Panther Party, in his sleep. They enlisted the help of the Chicago Police Department, who carried out the brutal assassination and then orchestrated a sloppy cover-up and media campaign that was quickly exposed. [9]

And when did the national narrative around Donald Trump start to actually flip? When he set the stage for a mob of his supporters to carry out a deadly insurrection that nearly toppled American democracy. [10]

When it hits where it hurts, people start to listen.

Think about your own life. What aspects of yourself only changed when not changing cost you?

Everyone and every organization has a price above which they will listen and change. This principle applies readily to corporate power structures, which are morally neutral by nature. They will generally take the least-cost/most-profit path. If you want to implement change, you have to argue the relative costs effectively. We must be realistic in seeing this as the only reliable avenue for change in a corporate setting.

Loyalty

Corporations do not possess a general-purpose concept of loyalty. You can invest significant time and energy working for a company and then be quickly discarded one day. There is no incentive for a company to invest in long-term strategies that produce happy ex-employees. Former employees don’t do the work of the business, with very few exceptions.

You might be told “we’re special and we genuinely care about our employees”. To this, you can smile and nod. That’s an espoused belief designed to maximize the company’s hiring and retention metrics as compared to its competitors. The moment you’re no longer an employee or you become an inconvenience, that statement won’t apply to you anymore. It’s merely an espoused belief. This is part of why refering to one's colleagues as "family" is unethical.

Implications for leaders

The implications of the preceding analysis for aspiring leaders within a corporate power hierarchy are multifold.

1. We must develop and maintain sophisticated systems of meta-beliefs

That is, our beliefs about what others believe. And that means mapping out both halves (espoused and attributed) at individual and organizational levels. Always remembering that they may be quite different, possibly to the extent of being in direct contradiction. A manager may tell you straight to your face that “everyone is free to choose their work hours” when you know that’s a gross misdirection. That sort of thing is common and expected within the dual system framework. It's a strategy of maintaining two realities dedicated to separate purposes.

We must also be prepared to confidently maintain our own dual system of beliefs. This happens automatically in a corporate heirarchy, so we might as well be intentional about it. If it’s in the service of management above you, it aligns with the “followership up, benevolent dictatorship down” dynamic. It's necessary for a leader’s political well-being.

2. We must keep our manager happy as a first priority

That means consistently putting our manager’s needs above those of our subordinates. Violate that principle and you’ll be putting a target on your own back. This is especially true if you prioritize the needs of non-subordinates (e.g. peers). This is another direct implication of the “followership up, benevolent dictatorship down” dynamic.

3. We must only pursue organizational change when we can effectively argue the relative costs and be rewarded for driving such change

No rational corporate leader will allow themselves to be caught instituting changes simply because someone felt like it. You have to pick your battles and see through espoused beliefs. If you must contribute to positive change, do so carefully through the appropriate channels. And ignore the rest, framing it as plainly out of your control [11].

References

[1] Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 1985.

[2] Paul Babiak and Mary Ellen O'Toole, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, The Corporate Psychopath, 2012.

[3] Dennis Reina and Michelle Reina, Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace: Building Effective Relationships in Your Organization, 2015.

[4] Marc Hurwitz and Samantha Hurwitz, Leadership is Half the Story: A Fresh Look at Followership, Leadership, and Collaboration, 2015.

[5] Daniel Goleman, The Emotionally Intelligent Leader, 2019.

[6] Robert I. Sutton, The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt, 2017.

[7] Elizabeth Shaw, Overcoming Narcissistic Abuse blog, How The Narcissist Controls People, With Coercive Control, 2020.

[8] George Carlin, YouTube video, Jon Stewart Interviews George Carlin, 2016.

[9] Ranjani Chakraborty and Melissa Hirsch, Vox online article, Why the US government murdered Fred Hampton, 2021.

[10] David Siders, Politico online article, ’It’s the Accumulation’: The Jan. 6 hearings are wounding Trump, after all, 2022.

[11] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2nd century AD.