Influence Depends on Trust, Not Just Authority
The most enduring forms of power tend to be relational
A few weeks ago, in an article I wrote about power, The Power Playbook: The Three Faces of Power, the insights of the political scientist Steven Lukes were discussed. He had argued that power operates at three levels: visible, agenda-setting, and ideological. In this framework, it’s not just who wins the debate that matters, but who decides what gets discussed and, ultimately, what people believe is even possible.
This is very much a layered understanding of power, and what it reveals is that authority and influence are rarely the same thing. The org chart might show who’s in charge, but it doesn’t explain why certain ideas still thrive while others die quietly in the meeting notes, never to be seen again. Moreover, the org chart fails to show who really shapes culture or how people actually internalise norms.
To build on those ideas, it is useful to consider that power, ultimately, is more about participation and connection than coercion. If we look at political theory or the literature on the corporate world, the most enduring forms of power tend to be relational rather than hierarchical. That is to say, they depend most of all on trust, alignment, and a sense of a shared purpose.
The Political World
In classical political thought, power was most often seen in terms of domination and hierarchy. Thomas Hobbes had described it as the ability to impose one’s will. For Hobbes, the sovereign’s monopoly on coercion was deemed necessary to prevent chaos. But over time, political thought evolved to reveal that power operates in much more subtle ways. Hannah Arendt, for example, has made the argument that “power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert”. The idea here is that power arises whenever people come together around a shared purpose. In other words, it is relational and collective, not coercive or owned.
Michel Foucault deepened this insight by showing that power is everywhere, embedded in relationships, language, and institutions. It produces possibilities, shaping what people see as normal, rational, or legitimate. Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony offered a complementary power lens to this, where in his view, dominance is maintained not only through force or policy, but also by shaping the narratives people accept as “common sense”, a phrase that is frequently used in political discourse today.
Nowhere is this relational and cultural dimension of power more visible than in political leadership practice. Just think of South Africa’s former president, Nelson Mandela, who understood power as both connection and moral authority rather than command. In the new South Africa that he led, the prioritisation was on inclusion. Despite everything that went before, his leadership brought former adversaries into dialogue and framed reconciliation as a shared national project. Mandela’s approach in many ways exemplifies Foucault’s idea of relational power and Gramsci’s cultural framing, by replacing fear and domination with participation and legitimacy.
This distinction between domination and legitimacy runs deep in international relations. Max Weber had emphasised that authority, the stable form of power, depends on legitimacy. Without that relational dimension, power just devolves into mere force. Probably the best example of this was the fall of the Soviet Union, which was not so much a military defeat as a collapse of legitimacy. Its own people no longer believed in its inefficient command system.
A foundational concept for understanding this dynamic is Joseph Nye’s idea of “soft power”. Nations do not exert influence just through coercion (hard power) or payments (economic power); they also shape the preferences of others through the softer powers of attraction and connection. The United States’ global influence has, for decades, rested just as much on its cultural and institutional appeal as on its extensive military reach. Just think of the influence of Hollywood or its legal and governance system, and how they have influenced other countries around the world. A rising China, in turn, seeks to cultivate its own soft power through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, blending financial leverage with relational diplomacy, though sometimes not without tension when connection turns into accusations of dependence, demonstrating the difficulty of converting economic strength into genuine soft power.
The same principle applies in economics. Markets, at their core, are really networks of trust. After all, money is only as powerful as the belief that others have in it. Financial markets function because of confidence rather than coercion. When trust is gone, confidence collapses. This was demonstrated during the 2008 financial crisis. In short, the real power behind markets, as in politics, is less about command and more about connection.
The Business World
In the business world, as is the case in the political world, power is often presumed to be synonymous with hierarchy. The traditional corporate pyramid, with the CEO commanding from the top, the managers controlling from the middle, and the employees executing at the bottom, in many ways mirrors the old sovereign model of power. While this is often the default position, modern organisational theory and management practice have evolved to show that sustainable power comes from networks.