We show how dominance makes teams shrink through unpredictability and control.
By naming patterns and restoring boundaries, we reclaim agency.

Series 1/12. This is a weekly essay series about power, the undercurrent, and agency. No diagnosis, but a sharp view of patterns that damage work and people.

When dominance takes the lead.

With amazement and disbelief, many of us listened this week to Donald’s speech. Just when you think you’ve heard and seen it all, this happens to all of us.

What can you say. There are leaders who make space. And there are leaders who take space.

And it’s the latter I want to talk about. In daily life, we also meet little “Donalds.” And you rarely notice it through one big collision. It starts with small shifts, almost invisible. An agreement that turns out to be “different after all.” A decision that gets rewritten the following week in a one-on-one conversation. A compliment that is just a bit too public, as if it’s a chain placed around your neck: you belong, but you are also stuck.

After a while the rhythm develops its own music. Whoever is close to the leader is right. Whoever asks a question gets a role: difficult, slow, too principled. And the strange thing is: you join in. You start making your sentences shorter. You start preparing meetings as if you have to defend yourself. You start, without anyone saying it out loud, trading ambition for caution.

One day you hear yourself say something you didn’t used to say: “Never mind, it’s not worth it.” And in that moment you know: this isn’t only a conversation about work. This is a conversation about power.

In situations like this, the word narcissistic sometimes comes up. It’s a quick word, a kind of container to park a complex feeling in. I’m cautious with it. Not out of softness toward the leader, but out of precision for you. A label opens the door to a discussion about someone’s inner world, intentions, childhood, wounds. That is tempting; it gives meaning to chaos. But it also pulls you into an arena where you have little to win. What you do have influence over is the pattern.

On the surface you see unpredictability: rules apply selectively, information is rationed, goals shift, success is claimed, mistakes are delegated. In the undercurrent something quieter happens, and therefore something more dangerous: people start adapting. Not to the task, but to the capriciousness. Teams become cautious. Colleagues become quiet. Loyalty is no longer measured in craftsmanship, but in compliance.

Psychodynamically, this is almost classic: where containment is missing, people look for safety. They start pleasing, avoiding, rationalizing. They split the world into allies and enemies, because nuance feels too expensive. And slowly the moral compass dims: what was called boundary-crossing last month is now called “well, that’s just how he is.”

The most treacherous part is that this system confirms itself. The leader experiences dissent as an attack and increases control. The team experiences control as danger and becomes quieter. Silence is read by the leader as agreement. And so the law of the strongest grows into a habit, as if there was never an alternative.

This is the moment when you have to make one choice that is bigger than you think: will you adapt to arbitrariness, or will you bring the work back to frameworks larger than one person?

This series is not about “fixing” someone. It is about taking agency, without illusions. Sometimes that means: helping the system remember its own rules. Sometimes it means: finding allies and making the dynamic visible. Sometimes it means: acknowledging that you are not the one who can carry an entire organization.

You don’t have to fight immediately. You also don’t have to leave immediately. But you do need a first step that makes reality solid again. Take fifteen minutes and write down three concrete situations from the past month: date, fact, effect. No interpretation, no diagnosis. Only: what happened, and what did it cost?

And ask yourself, at the end of that page, one calm question: where have you already started to shrink, even though nobody asked you to out loud?

Take what fits, leave what doesn’t match your context.
If this resonates: don’t discuss it alone, discuss it in plural.
Which one step brings you closer this week to dignity and containment?