Why Your Team’s Power Struggles Are Not About Power at All

kawkapc
Aug 29
5 min read

Updated: Sep 14

It’s Friday afternoon. You’ve worked hard all week, but instead of feeling accomplished, you feel wrung out. It’s not the workload that drains you, it’s the constant push and pull with people.

Staff members talking over you. Subtle one-upmanship in meetings. The “yes, and…” agreement that cleverly redirects the conversation back to their agenda. The surface-level apology that doesn’t really shift behavior.

You came to move things forward. Instead, you’re left managing an invisible tug-of-war over control.

Here’s the paradox: what looks like a fight for power is rarely about power at all. Instead it can be about safety, trust, and belonging.

And when leaders learn to meet those deeper needs, the power struggles often fade away.

The Psychology of Control

Autonomy as a human need.

Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, in their Self-Determination Theory (1985), showed that three needs drive human motivation: autonomy, mastery, and relatedness.

Autonomy, the sense of agency over one’s choices, is fundamental.

When people feel stripped of it, they unconsciously seek ways to regain control.

The illusion of control.

Ellen Langer (1975) found that humans will cling to even a perception of control when faced with uncertainty. In organizations, this means staff may push back not because they want to undermine you, but because having influence, however small, helps regulate anxiety.

Control vs. trust.

Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety shows that when trust is absent, people cling harder to control. True trust allows them to let go.

A team that doesn’t yet fully trust its leader may grasp for control not as rebellion, but as self-protection.

How Power Struggles Show Up

The behaviors you often see on the surface are not random, they’re psychological strategies to restore agency:

Playing the victim. By casting themselves as helpless, staff put you in the rescuer role, subtly directing the dynamic through guilt or sympathy.
Talking over or one-upping. Classic dominance behaviors, often less about disrespect and more about reasserting status.
“Yes, and…” deflection. Appears collaborative, but keeps the narrative under their control.
Surface accountability. “I admit my mistake” without depth neutralizes your authority to coach them, while preserving their control.

To you, these look like resistance. To them, it might be, unconsciously or consciously, about survival.

Rocky cave wall with layered textures and earthy tones. Prominent stone formations create a rugged, ancient atmosphere.

What’s Really Going On

Underneath the behaviors, three core needs are at play:

Status. As humans we are wired to guard our place in the group hierarchy (see David Rock’s SCARF model, 2008). A leader’s authority can unconsciously feel threatening.
Belonging. If people fear exclusion, they try to control how they are seen: “I’m smart, I’m needed, I matter.”
Safety. Without psychological safety, surrendering control feels dangerous. People grasp harder when they feel at risk.

This is why power struggles aren’t truly about power, they’re about fear, identity, and safety.

The Drama Triangle: Why You Feel Like the “Bad Guy”

Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle (1968) explains why leaders often feel cast into roles they never chose:

Victim. “I’m helpless, my boss doesn’t understand me.”
Persecutor. You, as the authority figure, become the critic in their story, even if you’re not acting that way.
Rescuer. At times, you’re pulled into fixing or soothing instead of holding accountability.

This cycle is exhausting because it keeps everyone stuck in drama rather than dialogue. It distorts relationships, drains energy, and creates more control battles instead of less.

Moving From Drama to Empowerment

David Emerald’s The Power of TED (2006) offers a powerful reframe called the Empowerment Dynamic (TED).

Instead of fighting the Drama Triangle, you transform the roles into healthier, growth-oriented ones:

Creator (instead of Victim). Focuses on outcomes and possibilities. Asks “What do I want?” and takes ownership for choices.
Challenger (instead of Persecutor). Brings truth with care, sparking growth and accountability: “Here’s the standard we need to reach, what support would help you get there?”
Coach (instead of Rescuer). Asks questions that help others discover their own solutions: “What’s within your control here? What step feels doable next?”

With this reframe, you’re no longer trapped in roles that drain you. You can step into Challenger or Coach, holding boundaries while empowering others.

What You Can Do: Tools for Leaders

Two lenses can help leaders break the cycle of control struggles:

1. Reframe Control as Shared Agency

Name the pattern without blame. “I notice we keep circling back instead of sitting with the idea. What’s happening here?”
Create psychological safety. When people feel valued, they don’t need to grasp so tightly for control.
Model vulnerability without losing authority. “Here’s what I know. Here’s what I need from you.”

2. Shift From Drama to Empowerment

Invite staff into the Creator role by asking what outcomes they want.
Step into the Challenger role by speaking truth with care.
Hold the Coach role by asking questions instead of fixing.

Together, these two tools create conditions where control struggles fade, because people no longer need to fight for safety or belonging.

A Note on Trauma-Informed Leadership

It’s also important to name this truth: sometimes, even when leaders create trust and safety, the control battles don’t ease. That’s not always a failure of leadership.

Organizational trauma (from past restructurings, inequities, or toxic cultures) can create “trauma-organized systems” (Bloom, 2013), where mistrust and hypervigilance are embedded in the culture.

On the individual level, unresolved personal trauma may shape how staff respond to authority, triggering old patterns of fear or resistance.

A trauma-informed approach reminds us:

Leaders can create the conditions for safety, trust, and empowerment.
But healing is personal. Some struggles are not within a leader’s power to fix. People must do their own healing work.

Leadership is about knowing where your responsibility ends and where someone else’s begins; it's also about modelling and creating accountability.

The Leadership Paradox

Here’s another paradox: the harder you try to suppress controlling behaviours, the more they escalate.

But when you meet the deeper needs of your staff, and reframe your role from persecutor or rescuer into challenger or coach, those same behaviors often diminish on their own.

At the same time, some struggles reflect deeper wounds that only individual healing can resolve. Leadership cannot cure trauma, but it can create the soil in which trust, safety, and growth can take root.

And maybe, just maybe, your Friday afternoons won’t feel quite so heavy.

An Invitation

If you recognize yourself in this paradox, tired of control battles, ready to lead with more confidence and less exhaustion, I’d love to support you.

As a leadership coach, I help leaders create the conditions where trust grows, control struggles ease, and teams thrive.

Reach out to me for a conversation. Together, we can help you lead from a place of clarity, courage, and freedom.

References for further reading:

Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (1985). Self-Determination Theory.
Langer, E. (1975). The Illusion of Control.
Pink, D. (2009). Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization.
Rock, D. (2008). SCARF: A Brain-Based Model for Collaborating with and Influencing Others.
Karpman, S. (1968). The Drama Triangle.
Emerald, D. (2006). The Power of TED.
Bloom, S.L. (2013). Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies.

Hi, I’m Monika, Strengths Coach and facilitator. I help individuals and groups cultivate resilience, emotional intelligence, and well-being through strengths-based coaching. Passionate about transformative and creative leadership, I empower leaders to drive meaningful change within themselves, their organizations, and beyond.