The authority myth: Do you need formal authority to lead?

Leadership and authority are often treated as if they mean the same thing. We talk about leadership teams, positions and development programmes, usually referring to people with management responsibility. Someone is promoted, acquires a new title and is now described as a leader. The assumption is so familiar that we rarely question it.

An experienced specialist may notice an overlooked problem, bring together colleagues from different functions and help them find a way forward despite having no direct reports, budgetary authority or formal responsibility for those involved. Meanwhile, a senior manager with considerable positional authority may struggle to generate commitment beyond their immediate reporting line. One has a leadership title; the other is exercising leadership.

The difference is especially visible in matrix organisations, where work crosses functional, geographical and organisational boundaries. Project managers depend on specialists who report elsewhere, technical experts influence strategic decisions without managing anyone, and regional leaders need cooperation from global functions with different priorities. Much of the necessary work lies beyond any one person’s formal authority.

The familiar response is to encourage people to lead without formal authority, as though influencing skills could simply compensate for the absence of hierarchical power. But what makes someone a leader: their position, their behaviour, the willingness of others to follow, or some combination of these?

Research suggests that leadership is neither reserved for those holding management positions nor something individuals can simply declare for themselves. People without formal authority can demonstrate leadership behaviours, leadership functions can be shared, and recognition depends partly on relationships and working conditions. Formal authority remains important, but it is not the same thing as leadership.

Authority and leadership are not the same thing

Ronald Heifetz offered one of the most useful distinctions between authority and leadership in Leadership Without Easy Answers (1994). Authority is granted through relationships and expectations, often tied to a formal position and its responsibilities. Leadership, in his account, involves mobilising people to confront challenges that cannot be resolved through existing knowledge, procedures or technical expertise.

Organisations are generally much better at assigning authority than recognising leadership. They can appoint managers, allocate budgets, establish reporting relationships and specify decision rights. These arrangements are necessary, but they do not guarantee that someone will exercise effective leadership. Equally, a person without formal responsibility may recognise an emerging challenge, mobilise colleagues and help the organisation respond.

Heifetz also distinguishes technical problems from adaptive challenges. Technical problems can be addressed through established expertise and known approaches. Adaptive challenges require people to reconsider assumptions, develop capabilities, negotiate competing values or change established ways of working. This is particularly relevant in matrix organisations, where difficulties often involve competing but legitimate priorities rather than a single correct answer.

A matrix leader improving collaboration between two functions may have authority over the initiative but not over each function’s people, resources or priorities. Joint meetings and shared objectives may achieve little if the underlying difficulties involve conflicting incentives, historic mistrust or different ideas about good performance. Progress depends on helping people recognise their interdependence and develop new ways of working; the leader cannot accomplish that simply by exercising formal authority.

This does not mean authority produces compliance while leadership produces commitment. Authority can be exercised thoughtfully, creating the stability and clarity people need to contribute. Informal influence can also be used to pressure others. Position does not necessarily make someone controlling, just as its absence does not make someone collaborative.

Authority provides access to resources, information and decisions, and can protect the space needed for difficult conversations and experimentation. Its limits become apparent when progress depends on changes in understanding, behaviour and relationships. In matrix organisations, no person’s formal authority is likely to resolve every competing demand because decision rights, resources and expertise are distributed across reporting lines.

The belief that someone needs a position of authority before they can lead therefore confuses the arrangements through which responsibility is assigned with the activity through which people confront challenges and make progress. Leadership can occur within formal authority, alongside it and sometimes in spite of it.

Leadership isn’t reserved for managers

James Kouzes and Barry Posner have spent decades examining what people actually do when they exercise leadership. Their Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership focus on observable behaviours, including modelling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act and encouraging the heart. Importantly, these practices are not inherently dependent on holding a management position.

In a 1994 study, Posner and Kouzes extended their Leadership Practices Inventory to individual contributors, examining assessments from 1,651 contributors and 7,073 colleagues. Their findings indicated that recognisable leadership practices were not confined to managers, with broadly similar patterns of behaviour emerging among people without formal management responsibilities, although some differences were observed. The research supports an important distinction: leadership behaviours can be demonstrated without possessing positional authority, although demonstrating those behaviours does not necessarily guarantee effective leadership.

For example, a specialist may recognise that an established cross-functional process is causing problems, bring colleagues together and help develop a better approach. Although they cannot direct those involved, their actions demonstrate several practices identified by Kouzes and Posner. Their contribution comes from what they do rather than the position they occupy.

The implication is that organisations need to recognise and develop leadership beyond their management populations. In matrix environments, where progress frequently depends on people contributing across reporting lines, overlooking leadership among individual contributors means overlooking an important source of organisational capability.

Leadership can be shared rather than concentrated

Recognising leadership in individual contributors is different from understanding how leadership can be shared across a team. Rather than viewing leadership as something exercised exclusively by an appointed manager, shared leadership recognises that different team members can contribute direction, coordination, support and expertise as circumstances require. It does not eliminate the formal leader, but challenges the assumption that leadership must always flow from the top.

Research provides considerable support for this perspective. In a study involving 71 change management teams, Pearce and Sims (2002) found that shared leadership was associated with team effectiveness and provided stronger predictions of effectiveness than vertical leadership in their particular research setting. More broadly, Wang, Waldman and Zhang (2014) combined 42 independent samples in a meta-analysis and identified a positive relationship between shared leadership and team effectiveness. Wu, Cormican and Chen (2020) subsequently examined 40 studies involving 3,019 teams, finding that shared leadership was positively associated with team outcomes, with stronger relationships where trust and task interdependence were high.

A more recent research synthesis by Wassenaar, Pearce and Lorinkova (2025) brings together developments in shared leadership research and examines how leadership can emerge through interactions between team members. The accumulated evidence supports a positive relationship with team outcomes, although the strength of that relationship varies with how shared leadership and effectiveness are defined and measured. These findings do not establish that shared leadership is always preferable to formal leadership or that distributing leadership will necessarily improve performance in every setting.

This is particularly relevant to matrix leadership, where no single individual necessarily possesses all the knowledge, relationships or authority required to deliver an outcome. A programme leader may coordinate the overall work, while technical, commercial and operational specialists provide leadership in their respective areas. Who takes the lead may shift according to the challenge, without changing formal reporting relationships.

The important distinction is that shared leadership does not mean everyone leads everything. Formal accountability and decision rights remain necessary, but leadership contributions can come from different people. The question becomes less about who holds the leadership position and more about whose contribution is needed to move the work forward.

Leadership is earned and recognised

While formal authority is granted through organisational structures, influence often develops through the relationships people build and the contributions they make. Julian Stodd (2014), in The Social Leadership Handbook, distinguishes between formal authority, which comes from a person’s position, and social authority, which is earned through reputation, trust and recognition within a community. The two can reinforce one another, but they do not necessarily go together. Someone may hold a senior position yet have limited influence beyond their immediate team, while a colleague without management responsibilities may be widely respected and consulted.

This perspective connects with the theoretical work of DeRue and Ashford (2010), who describe leadership as a social process in which individuals claim and others grant leadership identities. Leadership is not simply something we decide to exercise. It also depends on whether others recognise and respond to our contributions. In a matrix organisation, where colleagues frequently work across reporting lines, this recognition can be particularly important. A specialist who consistently demonstrates sound judgement, shares expertise and helps others resolve difficult problems may gradually become someone whose views carry considerable weight, regardless of their formal position.

There is a practical implication here. Building influence without authority is not simply a matter of becoming more persuasive or visible. It involves making contributions that others value, understanding their priorities, following through on commitments and developing relationships that can sustain cooperation when difficulties arise. Social authority takes time to develop and can be lost when trust or credibility is undermined. Nor does it replace formal decision rights. Being respected and influential does not automatically give someone the authority to allocate resources or make decisions on behalf of others.

For matrix leaders, the challenge is therefore twofold: to develop credibility and influence through their own contributions, while recognising and drawing upon the social authority that already exists elsewhere in the organisation. This makes building trust across organisational boundaries particularly important for leaders whose effectiveness depends on relationships beyond their formal reporting lines.

Creating the conditions for leadership

Recognising that leadership can emerge beyond formal positions is one thing; creating an environment where people feel able to exercise it is another. Research by Carson, Tesluk and Marrone (2007), involving 59 consulting teams, identified shared purpose, social support and opportunities for voice as important conditions associated with the emergence of shared leadership. Their findings suggest that leadership is not simply a matter of individual capability or willingness. The environment in which people work also influences whether they can contribute.

This is particularly important in matrix organisations, where people must balance competing priorities, work across reporting lines and contribute to outcomes beyond their immediate responsibilities. Matrix leaders can encourage leadership from others by paying attention to five conditions:

• Establish a shared purpose: Help people understand what they are trying to achieve together and why their contributions matter beyond their functional responsibilities. When priorities compete, return to the shared outcome rather than allowing each function to defend its own interests. A common purpose provides direction without requiring everyone to agree on every detail.

• Make space for different voices: Invite perspectives from people who possess relevant expertise, regardless of their position or seniority. Pay particular attention to those who may hesitate to challenge established views or contribute outside their formal responsibilities. People are more likely to exercise leadership when they believe their judgement will be taken seriously.

• Encourage initiative and ownership: Give people opportunities to shape approaches, propose solutions and take responsibility for work where they can make a meaningful contribution. Avoid pulling every decision back to the formal leader simply because they hold the recognised authority. Provide sufficient clarity about boundaries and decision rights so that initiative does not become confusion.

• Build trust through mutual support: Encourage colleagues to share knowledge, recognise contributions and help one another navigate difficulties across organisational boundaries. Demonstrate reliability by following through on commitments and addressing problems rather than allowing them to become someone else’s responsibility. Trust develops through repeated experience, not simply through declarations about collaboration.

• Remove barriers to contribution: Look beyond individual motivation to identify organisational conditions that discourage people from stepping forward. Conflicting incentives, excessive workloads, unclear priorities or repeated decisions made elsewhere can undermine even highly capable contributors. Where these constraints cannot be resolved locally, work with those holding the necessary authority to address them.

These conditions do not guarantee that shared leadership will emerge, and the research does not establish that every team benefits from distributing leadership in the same way. Nevertheless, they shift attention from encouraging individuals to demonstrate more leadership towards examining what makes their contribution possible. For matrix leaders, developing leadership in others is as much about shaping the conditions in which people work as it is about developing their individual capabilities.

When formal authority still matters: How much is enough?

Challenging the assumption that leadership requires formal authority does not mean that authority is unimportant. Organisations need legitimate decision-making arrangements, clear responsibilities and mechanisms for allocating resources and resolving competing priorities. A conflict over resources already committed to several priorities may require the involvement of someone authorised to make the trade-off. Understanding how to manage competing priorities in a matrix helps leaders distinguish what they can negotiate from what requires a formal organisational decision. Yet for matrix leaders, the more useful question may not be whether they have authority, but whether they have enough of the right kind to fulfil their responsibilities.

J. Richard Hackman’s work on team design offers a useful way of examining this question. His framework distinguishes between different levels of authority that can be allocated to teams, from responsibility for executing tasks through to managing work processes, shaping how a team operates and determining its overall direction. Rather than treating authority as something a person either possesses or lacks, the framework encourages us to consider which decisions are made at which level.

These are alternative ways of distributing authority, not stages through which every team should progress. Greater autonomy is not automatically better, and the appropriate arrangement depends on the work involved, the organisation’s responsibilities and the level of interdependence with other teams. In matrix organisations, authority is frequently divided across these levels. A programme leader may coordinate delivery and shape working methods while functional managers retain responsibility for allocating people and developing capabilities.

This suggests that effective matrix leadership does not necessarily require greater hierarchical power. Instead, leaders need sufficient authority to make the decisions genuinely within their remit, alongside reliable mechanisms for securing decisions that sit elsewhere. I would describe this as minimum sufficient authority: The combination of legitimate decision rights, an agreed mandate and dependable access to other decision-makers needed to fulfil responsibilities without unnecessarily concentrating control.

We can translate that into five practical questions.

Five questions for minimum sufficient authority

A matrix leader may have limited formal authority over colleagues yet still have sufficient authority to coordinate their contributions and make progress. Conversely, someone may hold an impressive title and substantial responsibility but lack access to the decisions or resources necessary to deliver the expected results. The difficulty is not always insufficient personal influence; sometimes the organisational arrangements themselves need attention. This is explored further in how decisions get made in a matrix organisation.

Wageman and Fisher’s (2014) examination of team authority structures reinforces the importance of deciding which leadership functions should remain with management and which can be exercised by teams. Their analysis builds on Hackman’s work and highlights how different authority arrangements create different leadership opportunities and challenges.

For matrix leaders, effective leadership is therefore not about avoiding formal authority or acquiring as much of it as possible. It is about having sufficient authority to act, clarity about its limits and dependable arrangements for securing the decisions that others must make.

What this means for matrix leaders

If leadership does not depend entirely on formal authority, the challenge for matrix leaders is not simply to become better at influencing people they do not manage. It is to recognise where leadership can emerge, how different people contribute and what makes collective action possible. This connects directly with four capabilities of effective matrix leadership: influence, networks, convening and stewardship. Each provides a different way of exercising leadership across organisational boundaries without relying solely on positional power.

• Influence: Build credibility rather than relying on position. People are more likely to respond when they recognise the value of your contribution and understand how working together supports their own priorities. Take time to understand what matters to colleagues, demonstrate sound judgement and follow through on commitments. Influence grows through what others experience of working with you, not simply through the strength of your arguments or your position in the organisation.
• Networks: Recognise where leadership already exists. Look beyond formal reporting relationships to identify people whose expertise, judgement and relationships shape what happens across the organisation. Build connections before you need something from others, and pay attention to those who may have considerable social authority despite holding relatively junior positions. Effective networks are not simply resources to draw upon; they help you recognise and connect the leadership contributions of others.
• Convening: Create opportunities for others to contribute leadership. Bring together people with different perspectives and expertise around challenges that require collective attention. Rather than assuming you must provide the direction or resolve every disagreement, create space for colleagues to question assumptions, shape decisions and take ownership of appropriate aspects of the work. Your contribution may be less about having the answers and more about enabling the right people to develop them together.
• Stewardship: Take responsibility for the conditions that enable progress. Look beyond your immediate objectives to understand how competing priorities, organisational structures and decision rights affect people’s ability to contribute. Where possible, remove obstacles, negotiate commitments and create clarity about responsibilities. Where the necessary authority sits elsewhere, engage those who hold it rather than expecting relationships and goodwill to compensate for unresolved organisational constraints.

These capabilities reinforce one another. Strong networks help leaders understand where influence resides, convening creates opportunities for different people to contribute, and stewardship helps sustain the conditions necessary for collective progress. None eliminates the need for formal authority, but together they allow leadership to extend beyond the limits of an individual’s position.

Closing reflection: Leadership beyond the organisational chart

The belief that leadership requires formal authority persists partly because organisations make positions and reporting relationships so visible. Titles, structures and decision rights tell us who is responsible, but they reveal much less about who people turn to for guidance, whose judgement they trust or who helps them make progress when established arrangements are insufficient. In matrix organisations, these informal contributions are often central to getting work done, yet they can remain largely invisible in conventional descriptions of leadership.

For matrix leaders, this invites a different way of looking at their organisations. Rather than concentrating solely on how to increase their own influence, they might begin by noticing where leadership is already happening, who is contributing it and what makes those contributions possible. It also means examining whether their own use of authority creates opportunities for others to step forward or unintentionally draws decisions and initiative back towards themselves.

Three questions are worth considering:

• Where is meaningful leadership already happening in my organisation beyond formal management positions?
• Whose expertise, judgement or influence am I overlooking because they lack a leadership title?
• What could I do differently to enable others to exercise leadership across organisational boundaries?

None of this makes formal authority irrelevant. Matrix organisations still need people who can make decisions, allocate resources and resolve competing priorities. But effective leadership also requires the ability to recognise and mobilise contributions that no organisational chart can fully describe.

The myth is not that authority matters. It is the belief that leadership begins and ends with those who possess it.

Sources

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