AI
Power is the ability to influence
Rosenberg opened by asking why the audience accepted her credentials. The positions confer power. She defined power simply: “the ability to influence.” A manager holds power to hire or fire. A speaker can ask someone to raise a hand. That is power. She then introduced Weber’s three types of authority: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. The late 19th century gave rise to Taylorism and mechanistic management, which treated workers like machines. Modern management evolved to focus on coaching, autonomy, and teamwork.
Power over versus power with
Mary Parker Follett distinguished “power over” from “power with.” Power over is directive: a manager assigns work. Power with leverages empowerment: a manager coaches a report. Rosenberg argued that directive power should be reserved for true emergencies, such as incident response for Log4j. Every use of authoritative power is a trust withdrawal. Trust is faster to lose than to build. Hannah Arendt defined power as collaborative: the ability to act in concert. A leader does not hold power alone; the group holds it.
Influence without authority
Security leaders often lack formal authority over the teams they need to influence. Rosenberg gave a four-step recipe: establish rapport, emphasize shared goals, provide security risk context (e.g., attacker scenarios), and describe mitigation options. This uses Follett’s concept of integration—combining perspectives to decide together. She contrasted this with “executive swoop,” where a senior leader disrupts an incident by overriding the incident commander’s directive power. The power dynamics of the executive unbalance the team.
When power dynamics go wrong
Rosenberg recounted a real incident: her team wanted to add audit logging for customer data access. The customer support team reacted with anger. They felt watched and feared workflow disruption. Rosenberg stepped back to understand the fear. They redesigned the feature to use HTTP referrer headers, logging transparently without changing the support team’s workflow. Everyone was happy. She cited Hannah Arendt: “violence is the expression of impotence.” Anger often comes from powerlessness. Tranquility can be a warning sign—people may not feel safe sharing concerns.
Key takeaways
Rosenberg closed with three points. Power is the ability to influence. Use power with and collaborative power to build healthy security relationships. Zero is not a target—disagreements and discussions are healthy. Use power for good.
Notable Quotes
the bear and the fish do not come to the table as equals Sarai Rosenberg · ▶ Watch (3:18)
trust is faster to lose than it is to lose than it is to build Sarai Rosenberg · ▶ Watch (4:15)
violence is the expression of impotence Sarai Rosenberg · ▶ Watch (22:31)
authority isn’t leadership. authority is force. Sarai Rosenberg · ▶ Watch (15:30)
zero is not a target. don’t aim for zero upset people in your work. Sarai Rosenberg · ▶ Watch (22:39)
Key Takeaways
- Power is the ability to influence, not just authority or title.
- Use “power with” (collaborative) over “power over” (directive) except in emergencies.
- Trust is faster to lose than to build; every directive use is a withdrawal.
About the Speaker(s)
Sarai Rosenberg developed expertise managing people due to her passion for equitably enabling her teams to do their best work, and her bizarre collection of special interests (in management and in understanding how allistic people communicate). As a mathematician, she’s excited by untangling…