In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews veteran executive Kathy Dorr about why many emerging leaders—especially women—feel uneasy about organizational politics, power, and influence, and how they can become more comfortable and effective in these realms. Dorr argues that the discomfort stems from vague, often negative definitions of these concepts and a belief in meritocratic myths. She proposes clear, value‑neutral definitions: power as the capacity to produce change (a dynamic energy) and politics as an invisible web of influence that can be mapped through supporters, trust, and agreement. By reframing power as skill‑based, leaders can focus on concrete capabilities such as effective delegation, building high‑performance teams, and setting strategic direction. For politics, Dorr suggests visualizing allies, assessing who trusts you versus who agrees with you, and deliberately nurturing those relationships through acknowledgment, credit, advice‑seeking, and information sharing. The conversation ends with practical tips for moving “ally‑ish” contacts into true allies, emphasizing reciprocity and high‑integrity relationship building. Throughout, the dialogue is conversational, instructional, and supportive, offering actionable tools for leaders to navigate and leverage politics and power with integrity.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you will get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Kathy Dorr, who was for many years a Proteus client as a very senior executive in the cable industry and has, to our delight, been part of the Proteus team since 2008. Now, one of her longtime passions, which she and I have talked about a lot, is helping young leaders and especially young women leaders to succeed. So, hi, Kathy, and thank you so much for joining me. Hello, Erika.
It's my pleasure to be here.
So, you've discovered something important and very pervasive that you and I have talked about a lot that gets in the way of young leaders' success, and that's their discomfort with organizational politics and with the concepts of power and influence. So, why do you think people, and women especially, feel uncomfortable with the idea of being political or being powerful?
Well, first of all, I think there's no common definition for these words. We're not sure what we mean by politics or power, particularly in the workplace. And we're not sure if what we think we mean is what everyone else means.
Ah.
So there's this underlying sense of uncertainty and vulnerability when people think about these words, a sense that, that maybe there's a secret and we're not in on it. And then I— yeah, I think that's one reason. But the second reason, the second source of our discomfort is that we really want to believe that our companies are meritocracies.
Mm-hm.
Where if we keep our heads down and we work really hard, we'll certainly rise to the top. And unfortunately, that's just not often the way it works. So we end up thinking to ourselves, well, that's just not fair. Instead of figuring out what to do in addition to working hard and doing our jobs well in order to make it to the top.
Oh, that's very clear. Now, one thing I wanted to throw in, because this has been true for me in the past, although it's no longer true, and I think it's true for a lot of people. I think a lot of people also have just a negative association with the word politics. I mean, look at what's happening right now.
I think it's very true. And I think more people are being added to that bucket every day.
Yeah, yeah. And is that true about power as well? Do people have negative associations with the word power, do you think?
I think it's true of many people, perhaps not as many as have negative connotations attached to politics, but particularly women, I think, historically have been uncomfortable with, you know, the word and the seeming demand to have it in a way that in many cases tended to sort of take away from any sort of feminine So I think there's a lot of history and a lot of negative connotations in those words.
I want to pick up on that last thing you said. I wonder if people think that since they have these either unformed definitions of these words or negative definitions for the words, if people think that being political or being powerful will somehow make them less authentic or less true to who they are?
I think definitely. I think it's a real issue, and that often people think, I have to put on a show, I have to be a good actor, I have to do things I'm not comfortable doing and be the kind— a kind of person that I'm not comfortable being in order to be powerful or in order to, in quote, play the politics game in an organization.
That sounds really accurate. That really reflects things I've heard a lot of people say over the years. So then, so from your point of view, why is it important for us to understand and kind of embrace these concepts, and how can we do that?
Well, it's important because they're real in any organization, and being able to deal with politics power and influence in a business context is a key component of success and, and of being seen as an effective leader.
Hmm.
I firmly believe that the simplest way to get more comfortable is to first clearly define the terms and then to determine what skills and tools we need to navigate effectively. For example, I like the definition of power that was developed by the Wellesley Centers for Women. They define power as the capacity to produce change. It's not a static state, and what I like about it is that it rather represents a potential, sort of a form of energy.
Mm-hmm.
And if we start to use this definition of power, then we focus on our own capacity to produce change in the form of clear results that are significant to our organization.
Oh, that's great. It's very value-neutral. I mean, you could produce fantastic change or you could produce negative change, and it's sort of up to you. But the definition itself makes it clear that it's just a, as you say, a capacity. That's great.
Right. It's not who you are, it's what you do. Yeah, that's great. And so if we focus then on the skills, what skills we need to develop in order to produce those results, that are significant and to expand our own capacity to produce change, that in turn, if it's done appropriately, effectively increases our power.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, we talk about skills like effective delegation, building high-performance teams, and setting clear strategic direction. All of those abilities work to expand our capacity and our ability to deliver results. So when you begin to think of power in that way, it's much less intimidating and much more actionable.
Less intimidating, more actionable, more practical, which I always promise listeners that we will talk about practical things. It's less about sort of some ineffable quality of charisma or something and more like, oh, if I learn these skills, I will be more effective. be more able to produce change.
Right, and I think, you know, it's interesting. I think you're absolutely right that we have this sense that it has something to do with charisma or quickness on your feet and all that, but at the end of the day, companies want people who can deliver results, who can actually produce change, either deliver strong performance or innovate. And so it really is about developing those skills in terms of defining and being powerful.
Talk to us, if you will, in the same way about politics— definition and then how to increase that political effectiveness.
Well, politics I like to think of as sort of an invisible web. It's an invisible web of power and influence in any group within which we all have to make our way in order to reach our destination. So, you know, Politics exists not only in the workplace, it obviously exists in almost any place you walk into, whether it's the gym where you work out, the retail store, the world sort of at large as well. And so really being able to define politics and get comfortable with it involves actually creating a picture of your supporters within an organization, who are the strongest supporters you have, how do people respond to you on 2 continuums, one of which is trust and one of which is agreement, and what action— again, then, what skills can you develop and what actions can you take to deal with people in a way that gains their true support? For you and for your success in the organization.
So both their trust and their agreement, it sounds like.
Right. I mean, trust tends to be unchanging from situation to situation, whereas agreement tends to be very situational. So for example, someone could trust you a lot but disagree with you on the amount of money you want for this year's budget. And so Many times knowing that, understanding that, then it becomes incumbent on you to be able to negotiate, to drive consensus, to reach clear agreements with people who may not agree with you on every issue but are supporters of yours within the organization.
So this is very practical. I mean, as I'm listening to you, it's how do you get clear-eyed really about who are your supporters and who are not your supporters in whatever environment you're in, and then And how do you work to build more support for yourself and for your ideas?
Exactly, exactly. You're always trying to move people toward what I call your allies. You're always trying to move more people into that group of people that you classify as your allies.
So if you could just leave us with one practical tip, let's say that I have someone who I think is ally-ish, is not certainly against me, is more or less my supporter. What's one thing that I could do to help move that person more into the ally column?
Well, it's interesting. I think that most of us need to spend more time developing and nurturing our allies. We tend to take them for granted, and instead of really nurturing those relationships, there are a lot of high-integrity ways to do that that we just don't think of in the day-to-day rush. We can simply acknowledge them and thank them for their support, And give them credit with others when that's due. You know, it's interesting, we can also ask for their advice more and offer to provide feedback to them.
Oh, that's great. So be their allies.
And sharing more information with them is also helpful. You know, think about how you react when someone comes to you and says, you know, I want to talk to you about this issue and really shares the depth of the issue and their insights about it with you, you know, you tend to want to reciprocate.
Yes.
So, really, it's about fostering and nurturing those allies so that, you know, when there are times where you might not agree on everything, there's sort of a basis for Negotiating agreements, or building consensus, or making trades within an organizational context.
That's great. So it's do unto others, right? The more you're their allies, the more they'll be your allies. That makes perfect sense. So thank you so much, Cathy. I always, I always learn a lot when we talk. It really makes me reflect. And listeners, I hope that's true for you as well, that this has been useful and interesting to you. And If you'd like to find out more about these ideas and other ideas for managing your career, just go to ProteusLeader.com/topics and click on Managing Your Career. So thank you as always for joining us, and here's to creating the life that you most want.
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