Leadership Programme for Women Navigating Informal Power: See the Decisions Before the Meeting

A leadership programme for women navigating informal power needs to start with a more useful question than “How can I be more political?” It needs to ask where a decision begins to take shape, whose view is heard before the agenda is fixed, and what information travels through relationships rather than through the formal chart.

Consider a director whose proposal appears well received in a steering meeting, only to be deferred without a clear objection. The quality of the proposal may not be the immediate issue. The decision may have been narrowed earlier: in a corridor conversation, an operational call, a private exchange about risk, or an assumption about who needs to be comfortable before the meeting. If she only sees the formal meeting, she sees the conclusion without the route that produced it.

This does not mean every workplace is governed by a secret cabal, or that women share one experience of informal power. It means that formal authority and informal influence often run alongside one another. The practical task is to make a particular decision system visible, then decide what should be handled differently by the leader and by the organisation.

What a leadership programme for women navigating informal power can illuminate

Informal power is the capacity to shape attention, interpretation or timing without necessarily holding the formal decision right. It may sit with the person who is asked for an early view, the colleague who translates a technical issue for an executive, or the manager whose concerns are taken as a signal of wider resistance.

That is different from being manipulative. It is also different from simply being well liked. In organisations, people need quick ways to test an idea, anticipate consequences and understand local constraints. Informal relationships can provide those routes. The problem arises when access to them is narrow, opaque or dependent on social activities that some people are less able or less welcome to join.

UK government evidence on women’s progression identifies social networks as shaping not only promotion but work assignments. Research reviews likewise locate gender inequality in organisational structures and everyday decision processes, rather than only in an individual’s behaviour. The implication is important: when someone lacks early information or a route to clarify an issue, framing the gap as a personal confidence problem misses part of the mechanism.

Look for movement before the meeting

Meetings are usually the visible checkpoint in a longer sequence. Before the calendar invitation, an issue has often been framed, a risk has been named, possible options have been ruled in or out, and people with relevant knowledge have compared notes. None of this is automatically improper. Early sense-making can mean a meeting is not the first encounter with a complex problem.

But a leader can be disadvantaged if she repeatedly receives the issue only at the formal checkpoint. She may be asked to respond to a settled narrative rather than contribute to its construction. The consequence is not simply less airtime. It is less context: which concern is genuine, which constraint is negotiable, what evidence would change a view, and who needs to understand the proposal before a decision can move.

A useful distinction is between information movement and decision movement. Information movement is who knows what, when and through which channel. Decision movement is who can alter the direction, delay it, add a condition or make an option feel workable. When these are conflated, a leader may spend time refining a presentation when the more relevant work is clarifying the decision path.

Map one live decision, not the whole organisation

A map of informal power is most useful when it is specific. Choose one live decision with a defined question, such as whether to fund a project, alter a service model or change a team’s priorities. Avoid starting with “the politics here”. That label is too broad to examine.

Begin with five prompts:

• What is the decision, and who formally owns it?
• What has to be true for it to be considered workable?
• Who provides operational, financial, customer or risk input before the formal meeting?
• Where do concerns tend to surface first: scheduled reviews, working sessions, chat channels or one-to-one conversations?
• Which parts of the route are unclear, inaccessible or dependent on invitation?

The aim is not to label people as allies or opponents. It is to understand roles in a process. A finance lead may be a critical interpreter of affordability. A respected operational manager may be an informal reality check. A chief of staff may control timing and context without deciding the substance. Naming the function of a relationship reduces the temptation to see access as a popularity contest.

Keep the map provisional. It is a working hypothesis, not a claim about motives. Ask neutral questions that improve accuracy: “Who will need to work with this if it goes ahead?” “What concerns are likely to be raised before the committee?” “When would it be helpful to test the assumptions?” Such questions invite information without demanding personal disclosure or rehearsing office gossip.

Build access without performing politics

Once the path is clearer, the next step is not to imitate a dominant social style. It is to create reliable, work-relevant points of contact earlier in the sequence. A short conversation to test assumptions, a written pre-read with a precise question, or a scheduled cross-functional review can be enough to change when useful information becomes available.

Make the purpose explicit. Instead of seeking a vague “catch-up”, name the decision and the input required: “I am testing the implementation assumptions before the review. Which dependency would you want us to address?” This helps the other person decide how they can contribute, and it makes the exchange easier to repeat.

Reciprocity matters too. Informal systems are sustained when people exchange context, not when one person repeatedly asks for favours. Share relevant information early, acknowledge constraints that another function is managing, and follow through on agreed actions. These are ordinary professional behaviours, not a demand to become constantly available or socially performative.

Some access barriers cannot be solved by better individual habits. Research in academic medicine found that gendered informal activities could provide direct contact with senior people, recommendations and access to decisions, while excluding others. Its setting is specific, but it illustrates why a request to “network more” is insufficient where the routes themselves are unequal. A leader can widen her own work-related connections; leaders with authority also need to examine who is routinely absent from the early conversation.

Make the informal system discussable

Not every decision needs a large consultation process. Yet teams can make critical parts of the route more visible without turning every conversation into a committee. They can state the decision owner, publish the criteria, identify the functions whose input is needed, and say when that input will be gathered. These small pieces of operating clarity reduce the advantage of being told informally what is happening.

For a senior leader, this may mean asking at the start of a project: “Which decisions will be made outside the main meeting cycle, and how will contributors know when to engage?” It may mean recording the assumptions that changed after a pre-meeting discussion, so they are not lost to everyone else. It may mean setting working sessions during core hours rather than making evening social availability an unspoken condition of influence.

This is not an argument to eliminate informal relationships. They can carry trust, local knowledge and speed. It is an argument to avoid making them the only route through which consequential context travels. Organisations have responsibility for the design of decision rights, information access and inclusion; individuals should not have to reverse-engineer the system alone.

Use the map to choose the next useful conversation

The value of mapping informal power is precision. It lets a leader distinguish between a proposal that needs stronger evidence, a decision that needs earlier cross-functional input, and a process that has become too dependent on private access. Each calls for a different response.

For the next decision, choose one part of the route that can be tested. Clarify the formal owner. Ask where implementation concerns usually emerge. Invite the relevant input before the meeting rather than after it. Then note what remains inaccessible or ambiguous. Repeated patterns are useful data for a conversation about team operating norms, not proof of a personal deficiency.

Seeing the decisions before the meeting does not require a performance of workplace politics. It requires attention to how a specific decision moves, a disciplined approach to work-relevant relationships, and organisational willingness to make consequential access less accidental.