Nik Kinley is a London-based leadership consultant, assessor and coach with 40 years’ experience working with some of the world’s biggest companies.
An award-winning author, he has written eight books, the latest of which is The Power Trap: How Leadership Changes People and What to Do About It, available now.
Power. It’s the invisible current that runs through every leadership role, from team leaders to CIOs, and global tech CEOs.
It gives us the authority to make things happen, to forge teams, shape products, and create impact. Yet, just like electricity, power doesn’t just illuminate and enable, it can also bite back and burn. Because a growing body of neuroscience shows that the power that comes with being a leader doesn’t just sit on the surface of who we are. It seeps inward, altering how our brains function, how we interpret information, and even how we connect with others. And in the fast-moving world of technology, where women leaders still face higher scrutiny and thinner margins for error, two of the hidden effects it has are especially worth understanding.
Driven to act
The effect leadership has on us is that it changes our propensity to act. Even merely feeling that you’re in charge (regardless of whether you actually are) activates a network in the brain called the Behavioural Activation System, a neural circuit that makes us more goal-driven, optimistic, and decisive. That’s why confident leaders can move fast and inspire action. It’s also why people with more power tend to take more risks and are more likely to pursue ambitious ideas. This is often perceived and celebrated as entrepreneurial energy. But the catch is that the same neurological shift also increases overconfidence. Leaders start relying more on gut instinct than input, more on what they already know than on new input and what others might see differently. Indeed, studies show that powerful individuals are less sensitive to constraints, less likely to listen to others’ input, and more prone to overlook warning signs.
That’s why their success stories can rapidly turn into cautionary tales, because giving people power hacks their decision-making processes in such a way that it both makes them more likely to take risks and thus succeed, but also more likely to fail as a result. In people who are naturally cautious or curious, the impact of power can be less noticeable. But in those already prone to overconfidence, it can have a significant and negative effect, ensuring there is a paper-thin line between rock-star entrepreneurs and powder-keg high explosives.
The interesting thing for female leaders here is that although studies show they are equally prone to overconfidence as men, and equally prone to engage in risky behaviour as a result of it, they are more prone to be judged harshly for it by observers.
The empathy gap
The second hidden effect leadership has on us is that it changes our ability to connect with others. For starters, every leadership role forces us to adopt a degree of psychological distance, as people will start to treat us a little differently because we are their boss. There is a degree to which this can be useful, too, as we do need to manage their performance and may need to make difficult and objective decisions about them.
But there is also neurological evidence that the longer we hold leadership roles, the more we lose our ability to accurately gauge what the people in our teams think and feel. We appear to begin to use the task-focused areas of our brains more when we deal with team-members, and use the social, relationship-oriented areas of our brains less.
In fact, as much as we might hate the sound of it, repeated studies have found that on almost every metric that matters, leadership slowly and subtly dampens our ability to both intellectually gauge what subordinates are thinking and emotionally empathise with them. For women, this can be a double whammy. Not only does it result in a loss of capability, but because empathy is more expected of female leaders, they are more likely to be judged negatively if they do not display it than male leaders. Even though what is happening is just the natural accumulation of leadership’s drag on people.
Rethinking how we hold power
If leadership quietly reshapes us, what can we do to manage is effects? Research points to three consistent practices.
- Mind the empathy gap. Empathy fades unless deliberately maintained. Systematically ask your teams what they think and how they feel. Make it routine, not occasional.
- Push openness. People rarely speak honestly to power. Build psychological safety by praising candour and protecting dissent. It’s easier to lose trust than rebuild it.
- Sense-check yourself. Confidence is not competence. When a decision feels certain, pause to ask: What could I be missing? Invite challenge before the market delivers it.
These are not generic leadership tips – they are neurological counterweights, designed to keep the human brain in balance when power tips the scales.
Talking about the P-word
Finally, the biggest barrier to managing leadership’s effects is silence. Few leadership programmes address how leadership and power change people. And in most corporate cultures, talking about power feels awkward or self-incriminating. Yet the data is clear: when power remains unexamined, its distortions grow stronger. So, this conversation is overdue. Power is not a dirty word. It is energy, and like any powerful current, it needs insulation and grounding. Leadership does change us. But it also reveals us. The more honestly we understand that, the more safely and effectively we can wield it.
