Leadership and the four uses of power
Oasis has been fortunate to have remarkable guides, coaches and supporters working alongside our individual and team coaches.
John Heron was one. He was a psychologist, philosopher, and educator with a unique gift: he helped people think freshly and deeply about power - not as a fixed force, but as something lived and shared. His thinking continues to shape my understanding of leadership and group life.
Some leaders familiar with our work, and many of the organisations we partner with will be familiar with his work on Six Category Intervention, which helps all of us to bring more awareness, choices and effectiveness to our leadership, coaching and facilitation.
Heron distinguished between different ways that power can show up in relationships and organisations. Most notably, he wrote about power over, power with, power for, and power against - each with its place, each carrying risks if used without awareness.
In business, there is often a default to power over - the traditional, hierarchical model where leaders ‘at the top’ make decisions, set direction, and hold others to account. At its best, ‘power over’ brings clarity, containment, and a sense of action. But unexamined, it can easily become rigid, subtly coercive, and/or disconnected from those doing the work.
Heron invited us to consider ‘power with’ as an alternative. This is the collaborative use of power: decision-making shared across boundaries, mutual respect as the currency, and leadership understood as a quality of the group - not just the individual. It takes more time, but it can create deeper trust, better ideas, indivdual and collective agency, and more resilient systems.
There’s also power for - where leadership acts in service of a person, group, or cause. It’s the parent advocating for their child, the manager shielding their team from unhelpful pressures, or the leader using their voice to lift others. In business settings, this form of power can be profound when leaders advocate for values, social responsibility, people, or long-term sustainability - especially when those things might be compromised by short-term gains. For many of us we feel it most when advocacy happens when those being advocated for are not in the room.
Heron also spoke of power against, which tends to make people uncomfortable. But it exists - when people resist, challenge, or disrupt power structures they find harmful or unjust. In organisations, this might look like whistleblowing, protest, a clear alternative voice, or principled dissent. When used with integrity, power against can be the spark for necessary change.
What John Heron emphasised was not that one kind of power was right, and the others wrong - but that leaders need to be conscious about which mode they’re using, and why.
That takes emotional intelligence. It takes the humility to know that sometimes power needs to be held, and sometimes shared. Sometimes it needs to be challenged. The most mature leaders I know can move between these modes with fluency - stepping forward when needed, stepping back when it serves others, and perhaps most importantly staying in tune with what’s happening beneath the surface.
I coached a leadership team in a family business where decision-making had always been tightly held by the founder. As the next generation came into the business, tension rose, not because of rebellion, but because the younger leaders were ready for more shared influence.
We worked with a framework of powerful alternatives, and it helped open up great conversations. The founder saw that they’d been using a form of ‘power over’ because it had kept the business stable and successful. But they also recognised it was time to practise more ‘power with’, co-creating decisions, and allowing others to shape the future.
For the younger members, understanding why power had been used in a certain way helped them find respect for the past - even as they asked for a new way forward.
John Heron’s work invites a simple, powerful question:
How am I using power, and is it conscious?
Which in turn raises:
To what extent do I understand and own the power I hold?
To what extent am I holding it over others to feel secure or important?
How well am I sharing it, even when it feels slow or risky?
Am I using it in service of something bigger than ourselves?
In business - and in life - these are the kinds of questions that shape not just good leadership, but wise and human-centred systems.
Heron was a friend of Oasis and a colleague whose influence lives on in me, and in many. His ideas are not just theory - they’re practice. They’re tools for navigating complexity with care, clarity, and courage.
This blog series is an invitation into curiosity, honesty, and deeper leadership. We’re glad you’re here.
Nick Ellerby is a coach and Co-Director at Oasis Human Relations, one of a group of thirty plus practitioners working in partnerships across sectors as coaches, hosts, convenors, speaking partners, facilitators, researchers and changemakers.
Why not try a FREE Discovery Session to see if an Oasis Coach would be right for you? Just click on the button below.