Blogserie 1/12. Dit is een wekelijkse essayreeks over macht, onderstroom en regie. Geen diagnose, wel scherp zicht op patronen die werk en mensen beschadigen.
When dominance takes the lead.
With amazement and bewilderment, many of us listened this week to Donald’s speech. Just when you think you’ve heard and seen it all, something like this still happens.
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. We meet little Donalds in everyday life, too. And you rarely notice it in one big clash. It starts with small shifts, almost invisible. An agreement that “turns out differently” after all. A decision that, the week after, gets rewritten in a one-to-one. A compliment that’s just a bit too public, as if a chain were being placed around your neck: you belong, but you’re also bound.
After a while the rhythm develops its own music. Those who stand close to the leader are always right. Those who ask a question get a role: difficult, slow, too principled. And the strange thing is: you start to join in. You shorten your sentences. You prepare meetings as if you need to defend yourself. Without anyone saying it out loud, you trade ambition for caution.
One day you hear yourself say something you never used to: “Never mind, it’s not worth it.” And in that moment you know: there isn’t just a conversation about work going on. There is a conversation about power.
In these situations the word narcissistic sometimes pops up.It’s a quick word, a kind of container to park a complex feeling in. I’m careful with it. Not out of softness for 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’s 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, errors are delegated. In the undercurrent something quieter—and therefore more dangerous—happens: people start adapting. Not to the task, but to the capriciousness. Teams grow cautious. Colleagues fall silent. Loyalty is no longer measured in craftsmanship but in compliance.
Psychodynamically this is almost classic: where a holding environment is missing, people seek safety. They start pleasing, avoiding, rationalizing. They split the world into allies and enemies because nuance feels too costly. And slowly the moral compass dims: what last month was called crossing a line is now “well, that’s just how he is.”
The most insidious part is that this system confirms itself. The leader experiences dissent as attack and increases control. The team experiences control as threat and grows quieter. Silence is read by the leader as consent. And so the rule of the strongest grows into a habit, as if there were never an alternative.
This is the moment you have to make one choice bigger than you think: will you adapt to arbitrariness, or will you bring the work back to frames larger than one person?
This series is not about “fixing” someone. It is about taking the reins, 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’re not the one who can carry an entire organization.
You don’t have to fight right away. You also don’t have to leave right away. 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 it cost.
And then ask yourself, at the end of that page, one quiet question: where have you already started to shrink, while no one asked you to out loud?
Take what fits; leave what doesn’t match your context.
If this resonates: don’t just discuss it—talk about it with others.
Which single step will bring you, this week, closer to dignity and solid ground?