The Power Principle: Why Influential Leaders Outperform Forceful Ones
Issue 207, April 10, 2025
We are intrigued by the uneasy balance between power and force – a debate that has recently become a focus of the American dialogue. This cultural conversation is underscored by author David Hawkins who wrote the insightful “Power vs. Force.” According to Hawkins, there’s an important distinction: “True power uplifts and serves the whole, while force demands justification and serves the few.”
Here’s a simple way to think about it. Would you rather be empowered or enforced? Do you respect others who are powerful or forceful? Do highly effective role models lead with power or by force? It all depends on the situation and the leader – and is validated (or not) by those who are led.
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Power vs. Force
Simply stated, power is internal, and force is external. Power stems from influence, integrity, vision, and values. It creates alignment and long-term impact. Force relies on authority, control, pressure, or manipulation. It may create short-term compliance but often leads to resistance or disengagement. Put into organizational terms, power engenders trust and invites collaboration. Force commands teamwork and may get fast results, but it tends to erode workplace relationships and culture over time. And there’s more: Leaders with power inspire partners, employees, and stakeholders by embodying purpose and clarity. Leaders using force may dominate negotiations or decisions but risk losing loyalty and agility.
In today’s workplace, leadership strategies have evolved into a preference for enlightened collaborative leaders over command-and-control, top-down leaders. Until recently. Organizations are facing a shift from influence, to control with recent federal mandates that are challenging emotional intelligence, clarity, and credibility. In its place, force is fracturing the value of emotional quotient (EQ) in leadership. Certainly, in our public institutions today force is pushing in from the outside to erode power from within.
The Personalities of Power and Force
Kim Peterson Stone describes Hawkins’ theory: “At the heart of Power vs. Force is the distinction between power and control (force). Power comes from higher levels of consciousness such as courage, neutrality, and love, while force stems from lower consciousness levels like pride, anger, and fear. Power builds and expands, while force diminishes and eventually collapses under its own weight. By aligning with power, you can craft a strong, authentic personal brand, handle business challenges with grace, and direct your career toward fulfillment and success.”
Think about leaders you know who “rely on force by projecting an image based on ego, pride, or fear. They focus on control, seeking to dominate their market or manipulate perceptions. They exert control over their teams, clients, or projects to achieve results. However, this can lead to burnout, resistance, and short-lived success. Operating from force can feel inauthentic and may collapse under scrutiny,” according to Stone. In contrast, powerful leaders speak from a place of courage, neutrality, and even love that creates authenticity and trust.
Lessons from Machiavelli and the Art of War
Two philosophers are known for their work on power and force as leadership strategies. The Prince was published in 1537, and Niccolò Machiavelli’s political treatise teaches that effective leadership requires realism, strategic manipulation, and pragmatic morality. He believed that rulers (or leaders) must do what is necessary, not just what is ideal, to maintain control, influence, and stability. He wrote that force was coercion, pressure, or short-term tactics to get compliance. It is useful in emergencies but unsustainable and its overuse leads to resentment. Power for Machiavelli is the ability to influence, inspire, or lead without resistance. The ideal is to build alliances, shape perceptions, and earn respect. But it gets a little more complicated. Machiavelli stressed the importance of appearing virtuous—even if you aren’t always. In other words, power is perception. He also taught not to get caught up in ideals but rather to deal with clients, competitors, and markets as they are, not how you wish they were. Use urgency (force) to close deals when needed, but focus on creating systems of influence—networks, trust, loyalty, and strategic advantage. And importantly, he believed in building power relentlessly and whoever controls the narrative holds the power.
Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu’s philosophy in The Art of War, written in 500 BCE, aligns with power, not force. He emphasizes inner mastery, wisdom, adaptability, and timing — all aspects of power. He avoids unnecessary conflict, preferring to win before the battle even begins. His principle of the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting when influence, strategy, and psychology triumph over brute strength. He taught, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Awareness creates an advantage without unnecessary conflict. His principle is “Avoid what is strong. Attack what is weak” uses leverage, not force, winning through precision. “All warfare is based on deception,” meaning power is controlled through perception and requires no physical exertion. “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight,” believing self-restraint and timing over impulsive action. “Engage people with what they expect… it settles them into predictable patterns of response… then surprise them,” advocating strategic manipulation over overt confrontation.
Power vs. Force in Organizations
We’re interested in this debate from a strategic perspective for leaders. How do organizations best navigate today’s complex organizational dynamics? Forging partnerships can take months and involve many different stakeholders. Here’s a recent case of the frisson between power and force. A new event was launched to recognize women in business and their unique approach to leadership. The event was designed to include mentorship, deal pitches, self-empowerment, and leadership strategy. Most of the speakers were female; participating men were described as “allies.” The two-day event received sold-out registrations and impressive sponsorship. Then the federal government enforced new rulings about DEI, which in turn triggered a lemming-like capitulation to these directives with elimination of DEI references in organizations. What happened to the women’s event? The sponsors fled, corporate speakers canceled, and the producers had no choice but to cancel the entire event. The empowerment the event had anticipated was invalidated by enforced change.
Understanding the nuanced distinction between power and force is not just philosophical—it’s common sense. At first glance, power and force may appear interchangeable. Both exert influence, and both can drive outcomes. However, their mechanisms, impacts, and sustainability diverge dramatically. Force is external, reactive, and often coercive. It pushes, compels, and demands. Power is internal, stable, and influential. It attracts, inspires, and sustains.
In an organization, force imposes deadlines, leverages authority, and pushes deals through. Power is earning trust, building alignment, and influencing without needing to command.
Short Term vs. Long Term
B2B transactions typically have long sales cycles. They involve multiple stakeholders with competing priorities. They are built on trust, mutual success and post-sales support and relationships. These transactions flourish with empowerment. It’s nearly impossible to build successful long-term transactions on force.
Leaders who rely on force for short-term wins like finalizing a deal or extracting a concession in negotiation often cause resentment, mistrust, and churn. Power is more of a long-term proposition nurturing collaboration, buy-in, and resilience. Alaina Love adds, “Adopting a worldview of scarcity sends a powerful message to your team that winning at any cost is the objective. It breeds the very behaviors that create silos, infighting, and zero-sum-game thinking. These less-desirable behaviors on a team don’t happen by accident; they are crafted by the consciousness level of the person leading it.”
Here’s a case study of the distinction. A retail buyer is told by her boss that she must sell all existing inventory before the new shipment arrives. In order to do that she must mark down unsold merchandise, make deals with vendors to take back their apparel, unload the product in off-price retailers and offload it to liquidators. What are the consequences? The merchandise is devalued eroding trust with customers. Salespeople are stressed out under pressure to sell the product, sacrificing sales commissions. A race to the bottom is kickstarted, undermining trust in the retail brand. Landfills are destinations for unsold merchandise. Customers either reevaluate the retailer as a place for cheap deals or avoid it as unworthy of their share of wallet. Force got compliance, but it tarnished commitment.
Here’s another situation. A sales rep has been working with a client to develop a strong, trusted relationship in collaboration to create a highly lucrative partnership. The sales rep has cultivated deep industry expertise to build credibility. He has invested time and energy in building strategic relationships across multiple departments in his client’s company. He crafts the partnership to align with the goals of his client and has identified champions within the brand to support the deal. The sales rep is a leader who doesn’t need to force alignment—he has created a mutually rewarding deal by understanding the dynamics at play, empathizing with his clients and speaking to shared outcomes.
Building Power
To shift from force to power, leaders can:
Listen More, Tell Less. Ask strategic questions that uncover root drivers, political concerns, and hidden objections.
Empower Champions. Equip internal advocates with tailored business cases, ROI models, and talking points that help them win internally.
Prioritize Long-Term Value Over Short-Term Wins. Resist the temptation to “close at all costs” and instead focus on building trust and alignment.
Lead with Vision, Not Urgency. Inspire stakeholders by painting a picture of shared success and transformation, not just immediate deliverables.
Model Calm Confidence. In high-stakes environments, emotional regulation signals strength. Power exudes steadiness; force betrays insecurity.
Power’s Secret Power
Ultimately, power is a multiplier. It enhances leadership credibility, opens doors, and creates magnetic pull rather than push. In B2B ecosystems, where relationships and reputations are everything, this kind of influence becomes a durable asset. Force may win battles. Power wins alliances.
Love writes that powerful leaders act with vision while remaining keenly aware of their own limitations and areas of needed improvement. They lead from a place of power because they operate at higher levels of consciousness, compared with individuals who achieve results through force by wielding threats, fear or intimidation.
According to Hawkin’s theory, there are four components to building more conscious leadership:
Your leadership mindset. Hawkins states “Your ability to lead from a place of consciousness depends in large part on the guiding and limiting beliefs that you hold. Those belief systems emanate from your personal level of consciousness, which, in turn, influences the consciousness of the organization. Guiding beliefs are systems of thinking that raise our perspectives and expectations about what is possible. They tend to be beliefs that allow us to feel we will be successful in our endeavors and deservedly so. Limiting beliefs, on the other hand, hold us back and those we lead by focusing more on why we might fail than how it is we will succeed.”
How you develop others. Developing others and growing the next generation of leaders is perhaps your most important responsibility, according to Hawkins. “Are you investing in the development of individuals who demonstrate not only technical competence but also a maturity of consciousness? For the organization to operate at high levels of consciousness, attention must be given to the design of development programs, training offerings and experiential assignments to ensure that they offer opportunities to grow skills and expand networks, while challenging participants to engage in deep introspection.”
How you communicate. There are so many opportunities daily to communicate consciously; the messages you send demonstrate authenticity, candor, respect, trust and appreciation, according to Love.
How you shape and nurture the culture of the organization. Culture is the living ecosystem of the organization. Love describes organizational cultures as ones built consciously to create an atmosphere of nourishing forces like innovation, shared commitment to success, dedication to customers, openness, collaboration, cooperation, acceptance and caring. As a leader, what are the rules of your ecosystem? What is acceptable behavior relative to how individuals treat one another and external stakeholders? How do you manage the toxic forces in your culture, and do you accept accountability for addressing them? Conscious leaders seek solutions in which the aim is less about winning and more about being in service.
Power Ascendant
At 2040 we work with our clients to understand the distinction between power and force and act accordingly. We advocate power-driven leadership, rooted in influence, trust, and ethical behavior because it is generally more effective than force-driven leadership, which relies on control and intimidation. We are strong believers in inspiring and motivating others through shared vision, fostering a positive environment, and empowering individuals to reach their full potential. Power-driven leadership builds long-term sustainability, a positive culture and empowered ethics. Give us a call and we’ll talk about it!
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