Power Isn't the Problem. What We Believe About It Is.
On reclaiming the word women were taught to avoid.
This is the first in a series of five posts, each focused on a single word. Words that shape how women show up in their careers, their relationships, and their lives. I’m starting with the one that makes a lot of us uncomfortable: power.
For a long time, I didn’t think of myself as someone who wanted power.
I wanted impact. Influence. Opportunity. The ability to make better decisions, create change, advocate for people, and help talented people grow.
But power? That word felt uncomfortable. Too sharp. Too political. Too self-serving. Too tied to images of dominance, ego, and people who wanted to win at someone else’s expense.
So like many women, I wanted many of the outcomes of power, without wanting to be associated with the word itself.
I don’t think I’m alone in that.
Women Often Don’t Reject Power. We Reject the Penalty.
Many women grow up receiving mixed messages about ambition, authority, and leadership.
Be capable, but not intimidating. Be confident, but not too confident. Lead, but stay likable. Speak up, but don’t take up too much space. Want success, but don’t look like you want it too much.
It’s a narrow path. And the stakes for stepping off it are real.
Researchers call this the double bind or the competence-likability paradox. Catalyst’s foundational study on women in leadership identified three specific traps that show up again and again: women are perceived as either too soft or too tough, never just right; held to higher standards but rewarded less; and seen as competent or likable, but rarely both. The research has been replicated across industries, geographies, and decades. The dynamic it describes has not gone away.
One of the most striking illustrations comes from a Stanford study. A professor took a Harvard Business School case study of a real, successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Heidi Roizen and split his class in two. Half read her story under her real name. The other half read the identical profile (same accomplishments, same decisions, same results) but with one change: her name was Howard. Both groups rated Heidi and Howard as equally competent. Howard was well-liked. Heidi was seen as aggressive and not the kind of person you’d want to work for.
Same story. Different name.
Men pursuing power are described as driven, strategic, leadership material. Women pursuing the same power can be labeled difficult, aggressive, political, cold, or “too much.” So many women learn an understandable lesson: want influence quietly, want advancement carefully, want power, but call it something else.
We aren’t anti-power. We’re often anti-penalty.
What Leadership Taught Me About Power
When I stepped into senior leadership roles, I began to understand something I hadn’t fully appreciated earlier in my career: power is real whether you acknowledge it or not.
My words carried more weight than I realized. My attention signaled priorities. My sponsorship could help open doors, and my silence could be interpreted too. People watched where I spent time, what I praised, what I challenged, what I ignored. And sometimes I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to the impact I was having, precisely because I’d never fully claimed the power I held.
That experience taught me something important: power ignored is still power. It’s just unmanaged.
And power used intentionally can create real good. It can empower people. It can elevate talent. It can challenge outdated norms. It can move resources where they’re needed most. It can make systems fairer, faster, healthier, stronger. That’s when I began to rethink the word itself.
Maybe Power Isn’t Dominance. Maybe It’s Capacity.
What if power isn’t about control? What if power is capacity? The capacity to influence outcomes, make decisions, create change, help others rise, and move ideas into action?
Seen this way, power becomes less about ego and more about responsibility. And that matters, especially for women who care deeply about making an impact. Because when thoughtful people avoid power, power doesn’t disappear. It just gets concentrated elsewhere.
Competence Alone Is Not Enough
Work hard. Be excellent. Deliver results. That advice matters. Competence is foundational. But it’s not sufficient on its own.
Organizations are not pure meritocracies. Performance matters, but so do visibility, relationships, reputation, influence, and access. Many women were taught to master the work. Fewer were taught to understand the system around it.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business who has spent decades studying organizational power, makes a point in his book Power: Why Some People Have It And Others Don’t, that stuck with me: stop looking backward at what you’ve already proven, and start positioning yourself for what comes next. He calls it feed-forward instead of feedback. Rather than building a case for why you deserve recognition based on your track record, focus your energy on demonstrating what you’re capable of doing from here. For women who’ve spent years accumulating credentials to justify their seat at the table, that’s a quiet but meaningful shift. The question moves from “have I earned this?” to “what am I signaling I’m ready for next?”
That’s not playing politics. It’s organizational awareness. Understanding how decisions actually get made, where influence actually lives, and how to position yourself to shape outcomes rather than just execute them.
How to Build Power Authentically
Power doesn’t begin with a title. Long before formal authority, you can build real influence, and that foundation matters whether or not a leadership role ever follows.
Credibility. Become known for solving meaningful problems well. This is the core, and it’s one most women already invest in deeply. The question is whether it’s visible enough to people who matter.
Relationships. Build trust across teams, levels, and functions, not just within your immediate world. Power flows through networks. The people who can advocate for you, sponsor you, and open doors for you often aren’t in your direct chain of management.
Visibility. Here’s a line I come back to often with my own clients: it’s not who you know. It’s not even what you know. It’s who knows what you know. Visibility isn’t self-promotion in the uncomfortable sense. It’s making sure your expertise and contributions are findable by the people who need them. That might mean sending a brief note when a project lands well, speaking up in the meetings where decisions actually happen, or asking to be in the room for a conversation that’s relevant to your work.
Strategic communication. Speak with clarity. Share your thinking early, before decisions are finalized. Influence is easier to exercise upstream than downstream.
Understanding the system. Know who makes decisions in your organization, where resources flow, and how priorities actually get set. Competence doesn’t automatically come with this knowledge, you have to learn it deliberately. Which functional areas or specific leaders hold the most organizational power? Who approves what? Who needs to be in your corner? This is worth understanding clearly.
Presence. Take your seat at the table. Not the chair at the edge of the room. The one at the table, where you belong. Don’t shrink yourself in rooms you’ve earned the right to be in.
None of this requires becoming someone you’re not. It requires becoming more strategic about how the genuine value you bring actually gets seen.
A Better Question
Instead of asking “Do I want power?”, try asking “What could I improve if I had more of it?”
What team or effort could you better impact? What ideas could you accelerate? What career path could you shape? What doors could you open? For yourself, and for others?
A Different Kind of Power
When I look back at my own discomfort with the word power, I think what I was really rejecting was a version of it I didn’t want to embody: power as dominance, as ego, as winning at someone else’s expense. That version is real, and it exists in the world. But it isn’t the only version.
Power at its best is not domination. It is the ability to make things better. To have a meaningful impact. And the world needs more women willing to claim that. Not quietly, not apologetically, but with the full weight of what they’re capable of.
Maybe power isn’t the problem. Maybe our belief of it is.
Question for you: Where in your life or career do you already have more power than you think?
Next week’s word: Purpose. The word that grounds everything else. Looking forward to exploring it with you. Until then, keep carving your path.
Ahhhh, I love this post! The word "power" has always carried such a negative connotation for women, and I remember reading the Harvard "Heidi/Howard" study - sad, but real. My hope is that EVERY women in the working world - and really, any woman trying to Get Things Done - reads it. I hope your post is published somewhere, Tracy! It addresses something so important!