What Power Reveals About the One Holding It
Carla Madeleine is an attorney, executive leader, and advisor who guides executives in integrating unexamined inner aspects so their leadership becomes examined rather than reactive. Her work bridges authority, authenticity, and inner transformation, particularly during moments of personal and organizational transition.
Most of us don’t meet our true and full selves in calm moments. We meet ourselves when the stakes are high, when timelines tighten, when pressure mounts, when decisions carry visible consequences. It is in those moments that leadership stops being theoretical and becomes personal.
Power, in these moments, doesn’t transform who we are. It reveals it.
That idea can be unsettling. Many leaders bristle at it, not because it’s wrong, but because it removes the comfort of distance leaders have been taught to believe comes with holding authority, with hierarchy. We prefer to think of leadership as something we do, not something that shows who we are. Yet the willingness to look is not a weakness. It is one of the strongest leadership capacities there is.
There is a particular discomfort that comes with realizing that our self-image, often skewed toward a more favorable or positive view, does not automatically produce a positive or desired impact. Most leaders I work with care deeply about being fair, thoughtful, and principled. When power exposes a gap between intention and effect, the instinct is often to defend intention rather than examine outcome. That instinct is human. It is also limiting.
Yes, intentions matter. But they are separate from outcomes. Good intentions do not automatically produce good leadership. They do not insulate us from unacknowledged dynamics, inherited habits, or unexamined beliefs. When leaders rely on intention alone, they miss what power is actually surfacing in real time.
Power functions less like a tool and more like a magnifier. It amplifies what is already present our fears, our assumptions, our relational patterns. Under pressure, we don’t suddenly become someone else. We become more ourselves, often faster and louder than we realize.
One of the first lenses power reveals is the set of stories we carry. Stories about competence and control. About who can be trusted. About what risk is acceptable and what failure means. These narratives often operate quietly, shaping decisions about delegation, transparency, and accountability. When left unexamined, they can harden into default behaviors that feel practical but are actually protective and erosive over time.
Another lens is fear, though it rarely announces itself as such. Fear often shows up as urgency, rigidity, self-righteousness, or impatience. It can look like over-functioning, micromanagement, or withdrawing from hard conversations. It might look like rushing a decision to avoid dissent, or framing pushback as resistance rather than information. In positions of authority, these responses don’t stay contained within the leader, they ripple outward, shaping team dynamics, psychological safety, and ultimately the organization’s capacity to fulfill its mission and purpose.
A third-place power reveals that our full self is in our relational habits. How we listen or don’t. Who we interrupt. How we respond when harm is named. Whether repair is prioritized or avoided. Authority shows up not only in decisions made, but in moments of pause: what we notice, what we allow, and what we rush past.
This is why authority is less a title than a practice. Formal power may grant permission to decide, but lived authority is demonstrated in how those decisions are carried. It requires a slower stance, one willing to notice internal reactions without being governed by them.
Self-examination, therefore, should not be a one-time reckoning, but an ongoing discipline. There is no arrival point where a leader becomes fully neutral, fully healed, or fully beyond reproach. The work is not to eliminate influence, but to become more conscious of it, especially when it is amplified by position.
Some questions are worth returning to again and again:
What does my power protect?
What does it avoid?
Who feels safer because of how I lead, and who does not?
The leaders we tend to trust most are rarely the most polished. They are the ones willing to be seen clearly, including by themselves. They understand that credibility grows not from certainty, but from coherence between values, behavior, and impact.
Power will continue to reveal. The question is not whether it will show us something, but whether we are willing to look.
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Read more from Carla Madeleine Kupe
Carla Madeleine Kupe, Executive Leadership Advisor
Carla Madeleine is an attorney, executive leader, and trusted advisor who works with leaders navigating power, responsibility, and transition. With a background in law, executive leadership, and organizational change, she helps individuals identify and integrate unexamined inner patterns that quietly shape decision-making, authority, and trust, particularly during periods of uncertainty, contraction, and reimagination. Carla writes at the intersection of leadership, inner work, and change, offering grounded insight for those shaping the future.
