Why Power-With Is Not the Same as Flat: NVC and Organizational Power Dynamics
- NVC Rising Platform Desk
- 20 hours ago
- 7 min read
Most organizations trying to "do it differently" start by removing formal hierarchy. Titles disappear. Consensus replaces top-down decisions. Circles replace pyramids. And then, within months, the same dynamics reappear — just without anyone named responsible for them.
The problem isn't the structure you built. It's the theory of power underneath it.
Nonviolent Communication draws a sharp distinction between power-over (control through compliance, punishment, and threat) and power-with (authority grounded in shared needs, genuine requests, and agreements people actually make). These aren't two points on a spectrum. They're different operating systems. And flat organizations, it turns out, can run on either one.
What "Flat" Actually Does — and Doesn't Do
Removing a hierarchy removes visibility into who has power. It doesn't remove the power itself.
In a flat organization, influence still flows — through social capital, confidence, communication style, tenure, or access to information. When no one has formal authority, informal authority fills the vacuum. The difference is that nobody's accountable for it.
Marshall Rosenberg identified the root cause decades ago: what he called life-alienating communication — the language of demands, judgments, and "have to" — both stems from and reinforces domination thinking. The org chart is downstream of that thinking. Removing the chart while keeping the thinking produces a hierarchy with better aesthetics.
> What power-over looks like in a flat org: One person consistently shapes which items make the agenda. Consensus is called, but some voices clearly carry more weight. Accountability conversations never happen because there's no mechanism to hold them. Everyone feels it. Nobody names it.
Power-Over vs Power-With: A Direct Comparison
The distinction between power-over and power-with isn't just philosophical — it shows up in concrete organizational behaviors.
Power-Over | Power-With | |
Basis of authority | Position and enforcement | Delegation from the group for specific purposes |
How decisions get made | Someone decides; others comply | Shared needs discovery; genuine agreements |
Accountability | Top-down enforcement | Peer-to-peer; collective ownership of patterns |
Resource distribution | Assumed or hidden | Visible and explicitly governed |
When things go wrong | Find the bad actor | "What are we doing together that keeps producing this?" |
The critical insight: power-with is not the absence of structure. It's a different theory of what structure is for. Roles still exist. Some people carry more responsibility in specific domains. Not everyone participates equally in every decision. What changes is the basis of authority — and who it's accountable to.
Miki Kashtan's Three Shifts — What Self-Managing Systems Actually Require
Miki Kashtan, who built extensively on both Rosenberg's framework and the foundational work of organizational theorist Mary Parker Follett, argues that self-managing organizations fail not because people communicate poorly, but because they haven't made the underlying structural shifts that power-with actually requires.
She names three.
Shift 1: From Power-Over to Power-With in Decision-Making
This isn't about consensus on everything. It's about being honest about who is deciding, on what basis, and with what accountability to the group's shared needs.
Many flat organizations confuse transparency with equality. Announcing a decision clearly is not the same as making it in a power-with way.
The diagnostic question: Whose needs shaped this decision? Who could have said "this doesn't work for me" and been genuinely heard — before the decision was made?
Shift 2: From Individual to Collective Responsibility
Domination cultures teach us to own our territory and protect our lanes. The shift to collective responsibility means the group holds shared ownership of its patterns — including the painful ones.
When power-over dynamics creep back in, the power-with question is not "who is the bad actor?" but "what are we doing together that keeps producing this?"
This requires trust that doesn't exist by default just because everyone agreed to "do it differently." It requires sustained relational investment — which is exactly where NVC is most useful.
Shift 3: From Structural Inequality to Transparent Resource Stewardship
Who has access to what information? Who carries which risks? Who controls the money, the network, the institutional memory?
Power-with requires that these differences be visible and actively governed — not assumed away. Most intentional organizations stall here because it requires naming uncomfortable differences in capacity, access, and risk, and then making explicit agreements about them.
What NVC Can and Can't Do in This Context
NVC is not a structural remedy on its own. Kashtan has been clear on this point for years.
OFNR — observations, feelings, needs, requests — is a relational technology. It can transform how individuals navigate power differences. It can reduce the harm of necessary conflict. It can help a team stay connected to what actually matters when everything gets hard.
What it doesn't do: redistribute decision-making authority, change who controls resources, or eliminate the fact that in most organizations, some people carry more risk than others if things go wrong.
A 2024 scoping review of NVC studies in healthcare settings found real improvements in interpersonal relationships, reduced workplace conflict, and stronger cultures of empathy — genuine, measurable gains. They're gains at the relational level. The structural question remains distinct.
This distinction matters most for facilitators and community-builders trained in NVC who are tempted to use it as the whole answer. It's a powerful part of the answer. Without the structural lens, it can become a sophisticated way to feel comfortable inside a system still running on power-over logic.
Rosenberg didn't want that. He described NVC as a tool of liberation, not accommodation. The most honest use of it in a hierarchical context is to see more clearly — and then decide what to do with what you see.
How to Apply This: A Practical Framework
Here's a step-by-step approach for organizations wanting to move from flat to power-with:
Name the actual power map. Who shapes the agenda? Whose objections are heard before decisions? Who carries disproportionate risk? Make it visible before trying to change it.
Distinguish decision types. Not every decision needs full participation. Clarity about which decisions are made how — and by whom — is more honest than pretending all voices weigh equally.
Build peer-to-peer accountability practices. Create explicit agreements about how patterns get named when they're harming the group. Without this, the only interventions are individual and informal.
Govern resource differences explicitly. Information asymmetry, financial risk, network access — these don't disappear in a flat structure. They need to be acknowledged and actively managed.
Use NVC for the relational layer. When these structural conversations get hard (and they will), OFNR gives people a way to stay in contact across difference. That's the job — not replacing the structural work, but making it survivable.
Signs Your "Flat" Organization Is Running on Power-Over
Decisions get announced as consensus even when significant voices weren't heard
The same people consistently shape what gets discussed
Accountability conversations almost never happen
People leave feeling unheard but unable to articulate why
Informal leaders emerge who are accountable to no one
"We don't have hierarchy" is said more often when hierarchy is most present
If several of these are familiar, the issue isn't communication — it's the structural theory of power underneath the communication.
A Practice for the Next Meeting
You're in the meeting. The dynamic is happening again. One voice is running the room, the flat structure is doing nothing to check it, and everyone can feel it but nobody's saying it.
Try naming a need instead of a complaint: not "you're dominating the conversation" but "I need more space for other perspectives before we move forward. Can we slow down?"
That's not a structural fix. It's a micro-intervention that keeps connection alive while the dynamics shift. It buys time and models something.
Then after the meeting, the harder question: what agreement would this group need to make — about roles, accountability, and how resources and information flow — so that individual NVC interventions aren't the only thing standing between power-with and power-over?
FAQ
Q: What's the difference between power-with and power-over in organizations? A: Power-over produces outcomes through compliance, enforcement, and the threat of exclusion. Power-with produces outcomes through shared needs discovery, genuine requests, and agreements people actually make rather than submit to. The key difference isn't the presence or absence of structure — it's the basis of authority and who it's accountable to.
Q: Why do flat organizations often recreate hierarchy? A: Flat structures remove formal authority without addressing the underlying theory of power. When no one has designated decision-making authority, informal hierarchies emerge based on social capital, confidence, tenure, and access to information — often less visible and less accountable than formal ones.
Q: Can NVC fix organizational power dynamics? A: NVC is a powerful relational tool — it can transform how individuals navigate power differences and reduce the harm of necessary conflict. But it doesn't redistribute decision-making authority or change who controls resources. Structural change requires structural work; NVC supports that work at the relational layer.
Q: What are Miki Kashtan's three shifts for self-managing organizations? A: Kashtan identifies: (1) moving from power-over to power-with in decision-making — being honest about who decides and with what accountability; (2) moving from individual to collective responsibility — the group owns its patterns together; and (3) moving from structural inequality to transparent resource stewardship — making visible who has access to information, risk, and resources.
Q: How is Mary Parker Follett connected to power-with thinking? A: Mary Parker Follett, an organizational theorist writing nearly a century ago, was among the first to articulate the power-over / power-with distinction. Miki Kashtan credits Follett explicitly and extends the framework into a more rigorous structural analysis relevant to contemporary organizations.
Q: What's the role of NVC in organizational change? A: NVC creates the relational conditions in which structural change becomes possible. It helps people stay in hard conversations, name their needs without blame, and make genuine agreements rather than submitting. Without the structural work, though, NVC can become a way to feel better about participating in a system that still runs on power-over logic.
Conclusion: Flat Is an Absence. Power-With Is a Practice.
The failure mode of non-hierarchical organizations is now predictable: informal hierarchies fill the vacuum left by formal ones. Often less accountable. Often less visible. Sometimes harder to challenge.
Power-with is a different aspiration. It doesn't promise flatness. It promises transparency, accountability, and genuine participation in decisions that affect you — and it requires sustained structural and relational work to maintain.
NVC is one of the best tools available for the relational layer of that work. Used without the structural lens, it becomes sophisticated accommodation. Used with it, it becomes what Rosenberg always intended: a practice of liberation.
If you're building something — a team, a community, a movement — start by distinguishing what you're actually trying to build. Flat is an absence. Power-with is a practice. They are not the same thing.
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