Hierarchy & Me
A resource page for leaders to navigate power dynamics.
Power distance is how someone views power and authority in the workplace.
You set up an open-door policy and no staff come to visit you.
You ask for feedback at a meeting and that one staff member is always quiet.
You wish more colleagues would refer to you with your title.
These are not faults with you or your staff.
These are signals of how power is understood and engaged with in a professional setting. And they can cause friction and collision, where the project is delayed, the staff member leaves and you, as the leader, feel frustrated and overwhelmed.
The good news is that there is a way to navigate these frictions and lessen your frustration. To begin, we need to understand ourselves before we can understand others.
How do you view power in an organization?
We can’t expect to get directions to our destination if we don’t know where we’re starting from. Sometimes holding up a mirror, examining what has shaped and influenced us will help us understand why we react certain ways, have certain expectations with our co-workers and how we understand other people’s behaviours.
We all view power and authority differently.
For me, I like a more flat-style of power and authority in a workplace environment. This is because I largely grew up with strict hierarchical systems, both with military parents and my religious upbringing. Others may have grown in environments where hierarchy wasn’t necessarily about power but about order, respect and protocol.
Let’s break it down into two thoughts:
Low Power Distance (Egalitarianism)
High Power Distance (Hierarchy)
It is interesting to note that most egalitarian (low power distance) cultures are Western countries. In principle, this is exactly the structure that is needed due to the colonial history of all these countries. In practice, however, these countries struggle with actually embodying equality and egalitarian structures.
It is important to note that hierarchical cultures and communities exist within egalitarian countries. The Original Peoples of Australia, Canada and the US all embody certain types of hierarchies and protocols within their community. When they aren’t recognized, our attempts at equality and equity fail.
Remember: These are generalized points.
People are complex. A person born in Japan, may have both a hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies. And in our western context, we might value collaboration and democratic process while our leaders still make the final decision on their own. There are many factors that can influence how we see those in authority or how we perceive power in a workplace.
These are not judgements but signals for us to know how to communicate, engage and be the inclusive leaders we want to be.
So how do I do it, Andrea?
How do I avoid the friction?
1. Accept the fact that there will always be friction.
We are people. We all bring various experiences, upbringings, values and traditions into the workplace. Friction will happen. How we respond to that friction and even more so, how we prepare for it, will make all the difference. But we cannot avoid it. And we cannot be afraid of it.
2. Understand how YOU see power and authority.
Take the quiz above. Take it once a year. See if you’ve changed. Think about how you were raised, what respect looks like to you or how you perceive your own power and authority. We often walk into the office with assumptions, biases and impulses we’ve rarely had to examine. By looking inward, we will be able to understand what is outward.
3. Honour the ways in which others see and embody power and authority.
Especially as leaders, we have the positions of privilege to make changes or adjustments in our approach to how we run meetings, how we expect feedback from staff, how we communicate and how we lead our team. This is what inclusive, relational leadership looks like - where differences aren’t a perceived as a threat but postured as a gift.
Tools for you
Avoid sifting through thousands of Google search links.
The sources below are credible and proven to help leaders navigate the friction and become culturally intelligent. They’re free and they’re for you to use in your workplace, in your team meetings and in your own personal life.
Relational Order Layer (ROL) Framework
This is a tool I designed for project managers, PMOs or any leader who oversees and engages with multiple people within their team.
I developed it because I’m a visual person and having a visual cue helped trigger my brain to think about my approach before I engaged in a situation or made assumptions. It is designed to complement pre-existing, standardized project management tools and templates - not replace them. Think of it as an added cultural layer to your stakeholder map.
Example
ROL doesn’t just work on stakeholder maps or matrices. It can work on your communications plan, your guest list for your next event or before your initial project launch. Use it in your personal life, in your neighbourhood or for your kid’s next birthday party.
Remember, how a person perceives power and authority impacts the way they communicate, how they ask or answer questions and why some behaviours happen. This is universal - but our lens of each other and how we approach power and authority is all cultural.
Canadian Salad Podcast
Join me and my friend Hostion, co-hosts of the podcast Canadian Salad, for a two-part series where we define power structures and how our own cultures shaped us to view them differently. Where Hostion and I find friction in how we see power and authority differently, we also agree on a universal understanding of what healthy leadership and societies can look like. Take a listen!
Canadian Salad can be heard across all major platforms. All of the sources we cite in the episode can be found on our website here. Subscribe as we drop a new episode related to culture every Tuesday!
The Educators
Power dynamics, hierarchies, social structures and cultural protocols have been studied for a long time. There are many great resources you can review. Below are a list of online links, book recommendations and other academic materials in case you really want to nerd out on it.
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For many years, sociologist Geert Hofstede studied how various countries and their cultures navigated universal workplaces. He found six cultural pillars which were formed from thousands of surveys conducted across global corporations.
Interested in how Canada sees power vs. another country? Check out the country comparison tool here.
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Erin Meyers, author of The Culture Map, found the six dimensions of culture to be a bit too narrow. She expands to eight cultural components on how global societies and cultures communicate, structure their societies and perceive the rest of the world.
You can explore her materials here on her website.
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Edward T. Hall explores the non-verbal components of how cultures and societies communicate. He explores how our view of time and space cause us to communicate differently and thus be more misunderstood.
The Silent Language, one of this books, is an excellent read if you want to explore the silent ways we and others communicate.
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Much of what we have explored on this page is about having a type of intelligence to understand differences and cultural perceptions. While there are certificates and training for cultural intelligence (CQ), I believe we are all capable of developing a stronger cultural sense in our own way. You don’t need a certificate to be more human.
If you are new to this word and the concept of cultural intelligence or CQ, a great paper to read from the Journal of Intelligence is here.