Let me introduce you to two people who share my body.
The first one walks into a client meeting- virtual or in person, the movie plays both ways- and she is all warmth. Big smile. Genuine interest. Questions that make you feel like you are the most fascinating organization she has ever had the privilege of sitting across from. She is curious. She is collaborative. She is the girlfriend you always wanted in your corner.
Her name is Mavis.
Mavis is my girlfriend voice. She is warm, approachable, and smart in a way that feels completely non-threatening. White colleagues especially love Mavis. She is- and I say this with full awareness of the absurdity- one of the good ones. The kind of Black woman who makes people comfortable enough to say things in meetings they probably should not say. Which is exactly the kind of intelligence a gap analysis runs on.
Mavis is doing reconnaissance. Nobody knows that but me.
The second one is a bulldozer. She is efficient, correct approximately ninety-five percent of the time, and has very little patience for circular thinking, unnecessary meetings, or people who confuse activity with progress. Left entirely to her own devices she would identify your problem, tell you exactly what needs to happen, give you a timeline, and expect execution. She is a true Virgo when in her element.
She would also end about seventy percent of client relationships before they had a chance to produce results.
So, Mavis goes first. And by the end of the meeting we will have identified every structural gap in your organization, mapped the political landscape of your leadership team, assessed your actual versus stated capacity for change, and started building the recommendation that will require you to do things you have been avoiding for three years.
But you will feel great about all of it because Mavis never stopped smiling.
This is power. Specifically, it is three types of power operating simultaneously in a single meeting while appearing to be a delightful lunch companion. And Black women have been doing it since before it had a name, a framework, or a LinkedIn thought leadership post.
Let us talk about it.
The three types of power. A quick primer before we get into it.
In 1959 two social psychologists named French and Raven published a framework on power that organizational behavior people still cite today. There are several types. We are focusing on three because they are the ones that matter most in the work I do and the ones most consistently misunderstood by the people who need them most.
Position power is exactly what it sounds like. The authority granted by your title, your role, your place on the org chart. People comply because the structure says they have to. It is the bluntest instrument in the toolkit and the one most people mistake for the only instrument. When someone leads with position power, they are essentially saying do this because I said so and I have the title to back it up. It works in the short term. It builds nothing.
Expert power comes from what you know, what you have done, and how long you have been doing it. Thirty-three years of organizational development work across thousands of client engagements is expert power. The room feels it before you introduce yourself. It is the most credible type of power available and the most interesting one – because it is the only type that multiplies when you share it. Every insight you give someone builds your expert power rather than diminishing it. The consultant’s paradox. The more you give, the more authority you hold.
Connection power is the one everyone underestimates. It is influence through relationship – who trusts you, who vouches for you, who takes your call on a Friday afternoon when they do not have to. It is built slowly, over years, through consistent presence and genuine investment in other people’s success. It looks soft. It is the most durable power that exists. Connection power does not evaporate when you change jobs or lose a title. It travels with you. It compounds. It is Mavis’s secret weapon.
Here is what Mavis’s connection power looks like in practice. There is a subject matter expert somewhere in every organization who is DND in the company IM system ninety-nine percent of the time. Unreachable. Unavailable. A ghost to most people who need them. Mavis calls. First ring. Answered. Question asked. Question answered. Ten minutes later a detailed email with full technical specs lands in the inbox – unsolicited, thorough, and exactly what was needed. Mavis has a network of people like this. Quiet contacts who offer information without pressure because they know two things- they will always be kept quiet and they will always receive genuine gratitude. Not a transactional thank you. Real gratitude from someone who remembers. That is connection power. It cannot be faked. It cannot be rushed. And it absolutely cannot be generated by someone who only shows up when they need something.
Most people lead with position power because it is the most visible. Experts wield expert power because it is the most comfortable. The truly dangerous ones- the ones who walk into a room and quietly own it before they have said a word- are running all three simultaneously.
The bulldozer in Mavis’s clothes.
Here is the truth about the shift I make every single day of my professional life.
The bulldozer sees clearly. The bulldozer moves fast. The bulldozer has identified your problem, mapped the solution, and drafted the implementation timeline before Mavis has finished asking how everyone is doing today.
But people do not change because they are told to. People change because they feel understood, respected, and safe enough to admit that something needs to be different. The consultant’s job is not to be right. It is to create the conditions under which the client arrives at the right answer themselves and feels ownership over it.
That requires Mavis.
Warm. Curious. Present. Asking questions that feel like conversation but are actually precision instruments. Building the connection power that makes the client trust the recommendation when it comes. Deploying expert power gently enough that it lands as insight rather than judgment.
The bulldozer knows what needs to happen. Mavis creates the environment in which it can.
Neither one works without the other. And running both at the same time, in service of someone else’s transformation, while appearing to simply be a very engaged lunch companion- that is the craft. That is what thirty-three years builds. That is what nobody puts on a resume because nobody has found the right language for it yet.
Why Black women are the best at this. An honest accounting.
We did not volunteer for this skill. It was assigned to us at birth and we have been practicing it every day since.
Black women navigate more simultaneous power contexts than any other demographic in the professional world. We code switch between professional and personal. We shift between assertive and approachable based on who is in the room and what they need to see. We read power dynamics the way other people read menus- quickly, automatically, and with a clear sense of what works in this particular establishment.
We learned early that leading with position power in spaces that were not built for us produced a specific kind of backlash. We learned that expert power, deployed without the cushion of warmth and relationship, made people defensive rather than receptive. We learned that connection power- the slow, consistent, genuine investment in relationships- was the one type that could not be easily dismissed or undermined.
So, we inhabit and excel in all three. Simultaneously. Out of necessity.
The shift is not performance. It is strategy. And it is the most sophisticated professional skill that nobody puts on a resume because nobody has found the right language for it yet.
Black women are the masters of reading a room, deploying the right type of power for what that room requires, and pivoting in real time when the room changes. We do it in client meetings and family reunions and board rooms and school pickup lines. We do it so automatically that most of us do not even recognize it as skill.
It is power. Expertly wielded. Constantly.
And now for the honest reckoning.
It is exhausting. And it is something else too. Something with a sharper edge that takes longer to name.
Here is what thirty-three years in corporate and consulting spaces teaches a Black woman who has mastered all three types of power. The mastery does not guarantee the advancement. Sometimes it actively prevents it.
I have watched people with approximately ten percent of my expertise get promoted. Not once. Multiple times. Across multiple organizations. I have sat in rooms where the energy shifted the moment I walked in- not because I was unwelcome exactly, but because excellence in a Black woman requires more management than mediocrity in someone else.
And I have been told. To my face. With a straight face. That I was too valuable where I was to be moved into a leadership role. That my expert power and my connection power were most useful right here, in this seat, doing this work. That position power – the title, the authority, the org chart legitimacy – was better suited to someone else.
What leadership was saying, without saying it, was this. We know what you can do. We have decided that what you can do is more valuable to us than what you could become. Stay here. Keep producing. We will keep benefiting.
The bulldozer took note.
And here is what happened after that note was taken. I run on twenty-five percent now. Twenty-five percent of my expertise. Twenty-five percent of my institutional knowledge. Twenty-five percent of the pattern recognition built across thirty-three years and thousands of client engagements. What was already a generous fifty percent – because the work never required more than that to produce exceptional results – got cut in half the day leadership decided I was most valuable right where I was.
They still get competence. They still get all the KPIs. They still get Mavis showing up on time and performing at a level that makes everyone around her look better by proximity.
But the other seventy-five percent of my expertise, my knowledge, my capability, and my genuine investment- that part clocked out.
Direct deposit every two weeks. Full stop.
They will never know what a hundred percent of me actually looks like.
We are pulling off the mask.
Something is shifting among Black women in the professional world and I see it everywhere.
The tolerance for performing all three types of power in environments that will never recognize or reward that performance is dropping. The willingness to send Mavis into rooms that do not deserve her warmth is running low. The energy required to be the girlfriend voice, the expert, and the connector simultaneously in spaces that have decided you are most valuable right where you are- that energy is being redirected.
We are not becoming bulldozers exclusively. We are becoming selective about where Mavis shows up.
That distinction is everything.
The power was always ours. The shift was always ours. The exhaustion and the grief were always real and always ours too. And underneath all of it- not ego, but facts- the absolute knowledge that we could run an entire division and still only be operating at fifty percent. That the room we are sitting in, performing at twenty-five percent, is being held together by a quarter of what we actually have. That is not arrogance. That is thirty-three years of evidence. What is changing is who gets access to the full performance.
A bulldozer who learned to sound like Mavis is not a contradiction. She is the most sophisticated professional instrument in any room she enters.
And she is done performing for people who were never going to promote her anyway.
What type of power do you lead with – and what would change if you deployed all three? Drop it in the comments.
