Some ideas stay with you for decades. For me, this one comes from a song by the Swedish crossover band Clawfinger I listened to obsessively in the mid‑1990s. I remember doing my compulsory military service at the time. Days were long and exhausting, the nights often heavy with thoughts. Before falling asleep, I would lie in my bunk, headphones on, listening to the album “Use Your Brain” by Clawfinger on my Sony Discman. The song “Power” being one of my favorites.
The main line of its chorus burned itself into my memory:
“Power to the One Who Doesn’t Want It.“
Back then, I understood the line primarily in political terms. Power for me meant governments, authority, and — quite naturally, given where I was at the time — military hierarchies. Surrounded by rank, obedience, and rigid command structures, the sentence resonated as a quiet counterweight to everything that felt imposed from above.
Decades later — after working in organizations and observing and researching leadership and the psychology behind it, the meaning of that line has shifted. Today, it speaks to something far closer to everyday working life: how power is distributed, who seeks it, and what happens when authority lands in the wrong hands. And why it may be wiser to entrust organizational power to those who are not the most desperate to obtain it.
The Problem Is Not Power – It’s the Desire for It
Power itself is neutral. Organizations need leadership, structure, and decision‑making authority to function. The real issue begins when power becomes something people crave, rather than something they are willing to carry.
People who actively want power are often driven by a mix of control, status, and the need for validation. In many cases, authority becomes a way to compensate for insecurity or to silence a deeper fear of losing relevance.
People who don’t want power, but still take responsibility, are usually driven by very different motives. They tend to act out of a sense of duty, grounded competence, and genuine care for others. Their focus is not on protecting their own ego, but on taking responsibility for outcomes and consequences.
This distinction is subtle, but it changes everything.
Why Organizations Keep Promoting the Wrong People
Most leadership selection systems are not designed to identify emotional maturity or self‑reflection.
They reward visibility rather than substance, confidence rather than real competence, and assertiveness instead of accountability. Political skill is often valued more highly than ethical grounding or emotional maturity.
As a result, leadership roles often attract those who need power to feel secure, not those who can handle it responsibly.
This is one of the central dynamics described in Breaking Free from Toxic Leadership: toxic leadership rarely starts with malicious intent. It often starts with unresolved inner needs, certain personality traits, or — in more severe cases — clinically relevant patterns such as narcissism or psychopathy, all of which become amplified once formal authority enters the picture.
When Power Becomes a Coping Strategy
Leaders who need power tend to control rather than trust. And that’s where things turn toxic. They micromanage instead of empowering others, intimidate instead of guiding, and react defensively to feedback. Disagreement is rarely seen as a contribution, but often experienced as a personal attack.
Power becomes a psychological crutch. And the organization becomes the stage on which personal insecurities are played out at scale.
The damage is rarely immediate. Instead, it accumulates slowly. Morale erodes, silence increases, and initiative gradually disappears. What follows are very tangible consequences: rising levels of employee burnout, increasing sick leave, and ultimately high turnover as people either leave actively or disengage quietly. Over time, many stop questioning the system altogether and start doubting themselves — a dynamic that often shows up as quiet quitting long before a formal resignation ever appears.
By the time toxicity becomes obvious, it’s often already normalized — embedded in daily routines, accepted as “just the way things are,” and difficult to challenge without personal cost.
The Quiet Strength of Leaders Who Don’t Want Power
Ironically, the people best suited to lead are often the least eager to do so. They tend to pause before stepping forward, ask questions rather than rush to answers, and reflect carefully before acting. They think through consequences, not because they are indecisive or insecure, but because they understand the weight of responsibility that leadership carries.
These leaders don’t rely on authority to feel valuable. They don’t confuse control with effectiveness, and they don’t treat leadership as a personal reward. Being challenged does not threaten them; it sharpens their thinking and improves their decisions.
They understand that leadership is not about being right or being followed unquestioningly. It is about creating the conditions in which others can do their best work and succeed on their own terms.
Why This Matters for Toxic Leadership
One of the most persistent and dangerous myths in organizations is the idea that strong leadership requires strong egos.
At first glance, this belief can feel intuitive. Confidence, decisiveness, and authority are easy to mistake for competence. Yet in reality, a strong hunger for power is often not a leadership asset, but a risk factor.
People who actively seek power are statistically more likely to misuse it once they have it. Often, they become toxic leaders themselves, using authority to control, dominate, or protect their own status. In other cases, they enable toxicity indirectly — by promoting similar personalities, tolerating abusive behavior, or creating conditions in which intimidation and fear are rewarded rather than addressed.
Over time, this dynamic shapes the entire working environment. Power‑hungry leaders tend to build systems that favor loyalty over integrity, silence over feedback, and compliance over accountability. Even leaders who are not overtly abusive can contribute to a toxic culture simply by failing to intervene, normalize harmful behavior, or challenge those who misuse power.
When authority becomes something to acquire and defend rather than a responsibility to hold with care, toxicity rarely remains an individual problem. It becomes structural — embedded in processes, incentives, and everyday behavior — quietly shaping how people lead, follow, and ultimately, how safe it feels to speak up at work.
A Question Worth Asking (But Rarely Asked)
Instead of asking:
“Who wants this leadership role?”
Organizations should ask who can tolerate uncertainty without panicking, who can be challenged without retaliating, and who doesn’t need to be the smartest person in the room. Most importantly, they should look for people who see leadership as a form of service rather than an entitlement.
These questions are uncomfortable. They don’t fit neatly into performance reviews or promotion matrices. But they get much closer to the root of healthy leadership.
Power as Responsibility, Not Reward
The Clawfinger line is not naive. It’s deeply realistic.
“Power to the one who doesn’t want it” does not mean that leaders should be passive, that decisions should be avoided, or that responsibility should be diluted. What it does mean is that power should never be used to stabilize fragile egos, that leadership must not become a compensation mechanism, and that authority should always come with self‑restraint.
The Question Behind the Question
After the chorus repeatedly insists on “Power to the one who doesn’t want it,” it ends with a line that is just as important. It poses a deliberately provocative question:
“Do You Want It? Why Do You Want It?”
That question is deeply unsettling — and deliberately so. It shifts the focus away from structures, systems, and even leadership theory, and turns it inward. Why do I want power? What do I expect it to give me? Security? Status? Control? A sense of worth?
In organizations, this question is rarely asked out loud. Yet it sits at the heart of many toxic dynamics. When the desire for power is driven by unmet psychological needs, unresolved insecurity, or the urge to dominate, leadership becomes a means of self‑regulation rather than responsibility.
The most important leadership question, then, may not be whether someone is capable or ambitious enough — but whether they have examined their own motives honestly.
Final Thought
Sometimes the most toxic and harmful leaders are those who needed the role too badly. Not because ambition is inherently wrong, but because an unexamined hunger for power often shapes how authority is used.
When leadership becomes a source of validation, control, or self‑worth, it tends to distort priorities. Decisions start serving the leader’s needs rather than the organization’s purpose or the people within it. Over time, this dynamic doesn’t just affect individual relationships — it defines the culture.So if your organization is full of leaders who strongly want power, you might wanna ask why that is. And if you’ve ever felt drained, controlled, or diminished under leadership, chances are the issue was never you, but the motives and structures that allowed such leadership to take hold.
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