Reducing Power Gradients

By Jade Garratt

In our experience, the most effective lever for increasing psychological safety within a team is flattening the power gradient – the gap between those with the most power and those with the least. In practice, this usually means two things:

1. Reducing the power held or overtly displayed by the most powerful individuals.
2. Increasing the power and influence of those with the least.

Different fields use different terms for this concept:

• Power gradient
• Power differential
• Authority gradient
• Cross-cockpit authority gradient (in aviation)
• Power distance (at a cultural level)
• Hierarchy differential
• Status asymmetry

Whatever we call it, if we fail to address power dynamics in the group, then many of our efforts to increase psychological safety and performance are doomed to failure. When the power gradient is steep, speaking up feels very risky – even impossible.  History, academic research and real-world disasters all tell us the same thing: that on the whole, people don’t speak up against steep power gradients, even when lives are at risk.

This challenge is so critical that we’ve made “Reduce power gradients” Number 1 of our Top 10 ways to Foster Psychological Safety. The field of Human and Organisational Performance, or HOP, recognises this too, highlighting that when there is a steep power gradient between those who plan the work and those at the sharp end, doing the work, the gap between “work as imagined” and “work as done” grows dangerously wide. If we ignore power gradients, we don’t just create inefficiencies – we create risk. 

Photo by August de Richelieu

What do we mean by power? 

Well, the power held by people in a group may be obvious and overt – someone holds formal power because they’re the boss. But power can also be informal – perhaps someone is good friends with the boss, or they’ve simply got some longevity in the organisation. Then there’s socially constructed power, where certain identities hold influence because they align with long-standing norms – such as straight, white men in a field historically dominated by straight, white men.

The kind of power that generates steep power gradients comes from a particular mindset – one that sees power as “power over” others. In contrast, when leaders embrace notions of ‘power with’ or ‘power to,’ the power gradient flattens. Integral to the idea of “power with” is reciprocity, while “power to” is about enabling and liberating others. 

This isn’t a new idea. Mary Parker Follett, whose early 20th Century insights still shape progressive leadership thinking today, spoke of enabling generative cultures through “power to” instead of “power over” more than a century ago.*

But how do we reduce power gradients?

This question comes up often in our workshops, and the answer is always contextual. But there are many practical ways to reduce power gradients, as well as more radical ways of reconceptualising power to try to eliminate the power gradient altogether. 

Micro-practices: everyday, individual actions

• Use people’s names, not their rank, job titles or (please, no) their pay grade when talking with and about them.
• Ask more questions. As Schein’s Humble Inquiry points out, asking questions from a place of genuine curiosity humbles us to the person whose answer or perspective we are seeking. We cede power to them. 
• Acknowledge when you don’t know something. Saying “I don’t know – what do you think?” models humility and flattens power differentials.
• Narrate your decision-making. Explaining your reasoning demystifies authority and invites discussion.
• Give credit generously. Recognise contributions openly, ensuring those with less status are acknowledged for their ideas and work.

Meso-practices: teams and group practices

• Share and rotate responsibilities around the group such as chairing meetings.
• Ask everyone to introduce themselves at the beginning of a group meeting, sending out a clear message that everyone matters. 
• Use techniques such as a “round robin” to structure turn taking and ensuring everyone has protected space to speak before more open discussion.
• Beware of the HiPPO.
• Rotate who speaks first, ensuring the most senior or dominant voices don’t stifle newer or quieter team members.
• Provide silent “think time” after posing a question and before open discussion, to allow more of the team to engage with the question and formulate their response.
• Hold Lean Coffee meetings where the agenda is decided in the moment, democratically, by everyone present. 

Macro-practices: organisational approaches

• Move the authority to where the knowledge is, devolving decision making wherever possible to those closest to the sharp end of the work or point of care.
• Co-create new approaches, ways of working and solutions to problems, don’t just “consult”.
• Hold open forums for discussion with people at all levels of the organisation.
• Redesign physical and virtual spaces to be more egalitarian. In aviation, cockpits are arranged to share power and promote shared responsibility, and we can apply this to our own contexts. For example, remove hierarchical seating arrangements in meetings (e.g., no “head of the table”), and ensure online meetings don’t visually prioritise certain participants (e.g., by defaulting to speaker view).
• Turn your org chart on its side or upside down. Yes, it’s only a representation of reality, but the message it sends out is powerful. Visually reframing the pyramid hierarchy into something less “top-down” reinforces collective responsibility

It’s worth recognising that changing behaviour is often harder than we expect. Even the simplest of these ideas can feel surprisingly radical, especially when they challenge deeply held beliefs about status and authority. Reducing power gradients isn’t about erasing leadership; it’s about redistributing it, so that speaking up, taking ownership, and making decisions become shared responsibilities, not privileges reserved for a few. When power is shared, teams don’t just function better; they thrive. 

*We delve deeper into power hierarchy and structures in both our Psychological Safety for Leadership and Advanced Psychological Safety workshops.

Related Reading:

Typologies of Power
Top Ways to Foster Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety in Aviation
Evolution of Leadership and Management in Healthcare: Lessons from Aviation and Crew Resource Management.
Edgar Schein’s Humble Inquiry
The First Organisational Chart
Power and Mary Parker Follett
Work as Imagined vs Work as Done
Lean Coffee

Collaboration with Status Asymmetry: Evidence from HIV/AIDS Disease Control in China
Authority gradients between team workers in the rail environment: a critical research gap
Authority Gradients: SKYbrary
Power Distance Belief and Workplace Communication: The Mediating Role of Fear of Authority

Luva, B. and Naweed, A. (2023) Ergonomics, 67(1), pp. 34–49. doi: 10.1080/00140139.2023.2202844.

Psychological Safety in Practice

Psychological safety’s role in preventing workplace incidents

Despite a small but interestingly vocal part of the safety community insisting otherwise, psychological safety has been shown repeatedly to prevent and mitigate incidents (both accidents and near misses), and this new report from one of our clients, Eversheds Sutherland, demonstrates that. In research on blue collar workers in the UK (generally non-office, physical work), it was shown that as psychological safety between workers and their respective supervisors, peers and teams increases, the number of incidents experienced by participants decreases. Read the full report here.

Fostering psychological safety in healthcare

I was honoured to be asked to contribute to this wellbeing supplement to Eye News: the Bimonthly Review of Ophthalmology, on practical strategies for fostering psychological safety in healthcare. Systemic resource deficits alongside pressures to hit targets within the NHS contribute to increased mistakes, and lower psychological safety required to admit them. People are less likely to speak up about problems and concerns if they’re likely to create more work in an already overwhelmed system. But even if large-scale systemic changes for our healthcare system are some way off, we can all make little changes to our own behaviour and practice, which cumulatively, could foster dramatic improvements in our experience at work, as well as patient safety. 

Team Rituals

One of the most effective of our 160+ ways to foster psychological safety in a team is to foster and encourage team rituals. Those things that a team does together, which may or may not have any actual rationale behind them, and that helps signify the team’s shared identity and bond. Here’s an article in HBR about the power of rituals in a team, although I feel they’ve missed a key point, which is that the most powerful team rituals emerge organically. The authors acknowledge that it’s important for rituals to be co-created, not imposed, but in our experience it’s even better if we surface what rituals the team already has, and build on those. 

Psychological safety is often mistaken for emotional comfort.

This is a nice piece in Forbes by Michael Hudson on the evolution of psychological safety over time, and addressing the frequent misconception that it psychological safety is about comfort, when in fact, psychological safety can be more productively uncomfortable.

Psychological safety in teacher retention

This paper by Patrick McClure investigated the impact of psychological safety on teacher retention in middle schools in the USA and showed that psychological safety is statistically significant in predicting a teacher’s intention to leave. 

This week’s poem:

Dangerous Coats, by Sharon Owens

Someone clever once said
Women were not allowed pockets
In case they carried leaflets
To spread sedition
Which means unrest
To you & me
A grandiose word
For commonsense
Fairness
Kindness
Equality
So ladies, start sewing
Dangerous coats
Made of pockets & sedition