I'm Confused

Most people think leverage comes from titles, authority, or hierarchy.

I’ve learned that it often lives somewhere else entirely.

In this episode, I share one of the mental models that has shaped both my career and my philosophy: learning to follow leverage instead of appearances. We explore why people so often miscalculate influence, how misunderstanding desire leads to misunderstanding power, and why seeing systems accurately may be one of the most practical forms of sovereignty.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I'm Ashley, and this is Dear Sovereign Self, my audio journal on the way I walk through life, practicing sovereignty, living from truth not wounds, and choosing alignment over self-abandonment. Here's today's entry.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Recently I was reflecting on a job that I had a couple years back. Maybe three, four years. I don't know, I won't qualify it because I'm not trying to identify anyone, but uh recent work history. So I have this role and I had a female manager. Don't really know how much the gender matters, but I had a female manager, and I found myself constantly saying I'm confused either to myself or out loud to her. And now I am by no means a doll crayon. You know what I mean? Like something's firing up there. So I couldn't figure out. I actually didn't even immediately notice that I was trapped in this pattern of expressing confusion until near the end of honestly. I didn't find the words for the why for the confusion until I came to record this entry, or as I reflected on putting this entry together. But I do remember at a certain point becoming conscious of the fact that I was constantly in a state of confusion in the situation. Now, I'm sure she assumed that meant I didn't understand what they were asking me to do. And that almost never was what I meant. Now I say almost never because there's like natural misunderstanding or miscommunicating of goals and like that. But ultimately, I would say I understood the assignment just fine. What I didn't understand was the leverage. I didn't understand why people were talking as though they possessed leverage that from where I was sitting, they obviously didn't, or why they were completely ignoring leverage, they absolutely did have. So I would just sit there confused. And the funny thing is, I genuinely was, not because I was trying to be like funny, cynical, and not because I didn't understand the people, because I didn't understand the map they were using. Like for those of you who don't know, I've spent almost my entire adult career supporting executives in one form or another, right? So I've lived adjacent to decision makers. I've watched companies rise and fall, acquisitions happen, leaders come and go, organizations restructure, budgets disappear overnight. And one thing I started noticing very early in my career, which I've talked about in other entries, is that people consistently misunderstood where influence actually lived, not authority, influence, leverage. And over time I realized that one of the greatest sources of confusion in my life has been watching people ignore the leverage they actually have while attempting to exercise leverage they don't. And so that's what this entry is about. Not manipulation, not power, but learning to accurately perceive and wield leverage. And one thing that that has always surprised people about me is that I've genuinely preferred working directly for executives. People here, executive assistant, and immediately imagine impossible personalities, huge egos, demanding expectations, power trips. And honestly, I've usually found the opposite. Not that executives are easier, but they're clearer. And the leverage is obvious. They know exactly what they're asking of me. I know exactly what I'm asking of them. We both understand the exchange. If I perform exceptionally, they win. If they lead well, I win. If either one of us drops the ball, we both feel it. It's clean. The closer you get to the middle of an org chart, the murkier that clarity becomes. And before anybody who's a middle manager starts throwing tomatoes at their phone, this is not an indictment of middle managers. In fact, I think they're one of the most fascinating positions in an organization because they have enormous leverage that they don't fully appreciate, while simultaneously trying to exercise leverage they don't actually possess. That combination has confused me for years. Take something simple. My manager says, I need this on my desk by five. Perfectly reasonable. But every now and then there would be this energy behind it, right? This implication that somehow the assignment itself created all of the leverage in the room. And my brain would quietly go, like, I'm confused. Not because I didn't intend to do the work, not because deadlines don't matter, but because my brain immediately started asking a different question. If this doesn't get done, who actually absorbs the consequence? Who's answering questions in tomorrow's leadership meeting? Who's explaining why the project slipped? Whose performance review is now affected? Who owns the outcome? Sometimes it's me. Sometimes, though, it's overwhelmingly them. That's not me saying I have all the leverage. It's me saying that the leverage is more distributed than people are behaving as though it is. And that's what fascinates me. Managers often possessed incredible leverage that they completely overlooked. They controlled coaching, visibility, development, access, trust, stretch opportunities, the emotional climate of an entire team. That is real leverage. Those things shape careers. But instead, I would watch people try to leverage fear or titles or hierarchy or implied authority. And I'd think, why are we reaching for imaginary leverage when there's so much real leverage already sitting on the table? So a major source of confusion in my life has been watching people ignore the leverage they actually have while attempting to exercise leverage they don't. And eventually I realized over the course of my life that I wasn't actually studying organizations. And again, we talk about this in a different entry. I was studying leverage. So why am I telling you all of this? Because this isn't really an episode about middle managers or executives or corporate America. It's an episode, entry, excuse me, about learning to see dynamics accurately. I think one of the greatest gifts my career has given me is that I've spent thousands of hours watching people make decisions inside of complex systems. And eventually I stopped watching the decisions and started watching the forces underneath them. Where is the pressure? Where's the accountability? Where's the leverage? Because leverage, in and of itself, isn't manipulation. Leverage is the invisible structure that's already holding the system together, whether anybody acknowledges it or not. And I think a lot of unnecessary conflict comes from people arguing about authority instead of accurately perceiving leverage. So that looks like one person says, I'm the parent. Another person says, I'm the breadwinner. Another person says, I'm the manager. Another person says, I'm the expert. Okay. Those may all be true. But none of them answer the question I'm asking. Where's the leverage? Because those aren't necessarily the same thing. I've watched employees with enormous leverage because they possessed institutional knowledge no one else had. I've watched assistants quietly redirect the trajectory of entire organizations because they controlled information flow. I've watched customers completely reshape companies. I've watched children transformed family systems. I've watched one honest conversation carry more leverage than 10 or influence, I should say, which is leverage, than 10 years of positional authority. Once you start looking for leverage, once you start seeing leverage, you realize titles are just one expression of it, not the thing itself. And maybe that's why I've never been particularly impressed by titles. Not because they don't matter, they absolutely matter to organizing the system. They just don't answer the question I'm trying to answer. I'm trying to understand the system, not the org chart. So once you start asking questions that get to understand the system, those are different questions. You stop asking who's in charge and you start asking who actually changes the outcome. You know what I mean? You stop asking who has authority. You start asking who's carrying the consequence. You stop asking who should win. You start asking who or what keeps this system healthy. Because those questions reveal a completely different world. And I think that is where sovereignty enters stage left, not with accumulating leverage, not with controlling people, certainly not, not with trying to become the most powerful person in every room, but with becoming calibrated enough to perceive the forces that are already there, to stop confusing visibility with influence, to stop confusing hierarchy with consequence, to stop confusing authority with leverage. Because when you can accurately perceive leverage, you stop feeling intimidated by leverage that only exists in someone else's imagination. And you stop overlooking the leverage you've possessed all along. I'm going to stop saying leverage, I promise. You stop reacting to titles. You start responding to reality. And that has changed the way I move through almost every system I've ever been a part of. So maybe that's why I'm confused has become one of my favorite phrases when I'm not in the EA position. Not because it's an admission of ignorance, but because it's an invitation to recalibrate. It's my way of saying the map I'm being handed doesn't seem to match the terrain I'm standing on. And before I adopt someone else's version of reality, I just want to take a look around one more time. You know what I mean? Just real quick by myself. Because sometimes confusion isn't a sign that you don't understand the system. Sometimes it's the first sign that you understand it oh too well. You know what I mean? So I'll leave you with this. Where in your life have you mistaken authority for leverage or overlooked leverage because it wasn't wearing a title? Let me know. We'll close the page here for now. Until next time.