Empowering Leaders to Manage Without Power. In today’s conversation Judith Germain speaks to Joris Merks-Benjaminsen about leadership consistency and ethical actions. They discuss the challenge of ensuring leadership consistency across an organisation, not just at the top. They note how organisational culture and values can drift over time if not actively maintained. Joris explains how leaders can inadvertently create inconsistencies through their behaviours and decision-making processes.
You can listen to Episode 471 on any of the popular podcast platforms or apps (including Spotify, and Audible). If you prefer to listen to your browser you can do that below. Enjoy!
Key Takeaways
- Leadership consistency requires balancing opposing forces (e.g. empathy vs accountability) while under constant pressure
- Small, conscious leadership behaviours have magnified impact on organisational culture
- Effective leaders must actively cultivate psychological safety and open communication with their teams
- “Managing without power” mindset helps leaders tune into team needs and reduce unintended pressures
Topics
Leadership Consistency Challenges
- Organisations often drift from initial culture as they grow, either becoming overly structured/performance-focused or too informal/”survival of the nicest”
- Pressure and competing priorities make it easy for leaders to deprioritise important but less urgent people-focused activities
- Formal processes like upward feedback can help, but leaders must also proactively create psychological safety
Personalising Leadership Approach
- Need to balance consistent leadership style/quality with personalisation for individual team members
- Requires spending time to deeply understand how each team member “ticks”
- Example: Adapting approach for neurodivergent employees while maintaining core values/expectations
Managing Without Power
- Mental model of “how would I lead without formal authority?”
- Helps leaders tune into team needs and reduce unintended pressures from their position
- Small, conscious behaviours (e.g. taking notes in meetings) demonstrate values in action
- Everything a senior leader does is “under a magnifying glass” – can be leveraged positively
Creating Psychological Safety
- Actively cultivate environment where team feels safe disagreeing/providing feedback
- Be aware of small behaviours that may contradict “open door” messaging
- Consider unintended impacts of leader actions (e.g. gym schedule creating unfair access)
In this conversation Judith and Joris explore the idea of personalising leadership to the needs of individual team members. They emphasise the importance of creating psychological safety, encouraging feedback, and being conscious of how one’s position of power can impact others. Joris suggests the “managing without power” mindset as a way to stay grounded.
Joris Merks-Benjaminsen is an award winning author. His latest book is titled ‘Managing without power’. Joris had a leading role in Google’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives, and was one of the highest scoring managers in the company’s history.
Joris Merks-Benjaminsen can be found on LinkedIn here. His website is here.
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