Most professionals can name one source of their own power. Few can name all seven.
Power at work is rarely built from one thing. It comes from seven distinct sources, and this framework, drawn from the Ethical Strategic Influence approach, sets out what they are and how they combine.
Credibility: the power derived from your professional standing and expertise.
Credibility is the reliance others place on you, based on trust and perceived expertise. When making decisions, people take input from others and decide how much weight to give it. Information from highly credible sources is accepted at face value, rarely challenged or verified elsewhere. If someone does not consider you credible, they will not believe what you tell them.
Character: the underlying traits, values and beliefs which shape your behaviour.
Strength of character is hard to measure, but its influence is considerable. It complements credibility well. Generous amounts of both put a person well on the way to becoming powerful and influential. This source concerns your internal world and how it manifests in observable behaviour. The old phrase character building has fallen out of leadership development, yet it once sat at the top of the agenda for anyone developing leaders.
Presence: the impact you create and the feelings you stimulate when people meet you.
Much is made of executive presence, with good reason. It is a source of considerable power and influence. It is usually described vaguely, as a collection of characteristics that combine to create an aura around a person, making them immediately noticeable. When they enter a room, everyone feels and responds to their presence.
Position: the roles you play and how you manoeuvre yourself into the limelight.
Getting into a good position helps considerably in becoming powerful. Position means far more than being given a role or title, though that is the most recognisable form. Others hold temporary positional power as project leaders, managers or sponsors, given responsibilities by the organisation. Further positions sit outside formal control. Union conveners, spokespeople and staff representatives all exert significant influence on organisational life.
Beyond this sit the myriad positions within the social fabric of an organisation. Party organisers, newsletter writers and the go-to people all hold positional power. This extends even to the office joker, the life and soul of the Christmas party, who holds the position of attention and can flatter or ridicule with equal mirth those they like or dislike.
Connections: the network of relationships you have around you and your work.
Connections make a person more powerful without question. Connections means the network of friends, associates and contacts a person holds. This network provides the capacity to influence people toward the achievement of goals. In turn, this enhances credibility through strong track record and results. A virtuous circle is created. A strong network of connections increases influence in a number of further ways.
Skills: those exceptional abilities you have which enable you to get things done.
People do not get ahead and become highly influential by being the same as everyone else. This source points to the particular skills a person holds that genuinely stand out. Not simply good at these skills, but exceptionally good, in a way others recognise. These skills need to be relevant to the leadership arena and the work engaged with.
Agenda: the issues and priorities you focus your leadership attention on.
Powerful and influential people share a trait. They hold clear opinions on a whole variety of things across the wider organisation. They have chosen to focus their agenda in a particular way, often toward fixing a problem the business faces. In other cases, they have decided how the wider population ought to view a given issue. Whatever the focus, they hold clarity, and most people around them know what it is.
Why the seven rarely sit in balance
Few professionals hold all seven sources in equal measure. Most lean heavily on the two they were trained and credentialed for, Credibility and Skills, and leave the remaining five underdeveloped.
Character, Presence, Connections, Position and Agenda are rarely taught. They are noticed only once absent. This is why technically excellent people plateau, while others with a fraction of their expertise continue to rise. The gap is not ability. It is which sources of power they have learned to build.
Knowing the seven sources exist is not the same as knowing which ones matter most in a given arena, or how to develop the ones currently weakest. That diagnosis changes by person, by organisation, and by moment.
The most effective and enduring senior leaders have learned to develop their power ethically and strategically. They do not rely on one or two sources and hope the rest take care of themselves. They build deliberately across all seven, and they do it with integrity, because that is what makes the power last rather than erode.
Colin Gautrey, 2014, Updated July 2026
Colin Gautrey has been developing and applying ethical influence, strategic influence, and organisational politics since 2003.