Making the Invisible Visible

Why Power Dynamics – Not Communication – Determine What Happens Under Pressure

A White Paper for Organisations Operating in Complex, Knowledge‑Heavy Environments

Executive Summary

The time managers spend dealing with conflict and the resulting escalations are one of the most persistent and costly challenges facing HR and People & Culture leaders. They drain time, weaken trust, create emotional strain and lead to staff turnover.

Most companies rely on communication training to resolve conflict. Communication skills are vitally important, but when power games are being played, good communication alone isn’t enough.

When someone is exploiting a power dynamic, their goal isn’t to communicate. It is to gain power. The conflict is usually the result of a wider strategy they are using to gain superiority. Sometimes the conflict is even a tool they are using in that strategy.

Understanding how even the most subtle power dynamics develop is essential to preventing escalations.

This white paper argues that many costly organisational problems – including repeated escalations, disengagement, attrition, and subtle forms of bias – are driven not by communications failures but by unrecognised patterns of dominance‑seeking behaviour that emerge most clearly under pressure.

The core insight is simple:

Understanding power dynamics predicts behaviour.

Firm, appropriate responses to micro‑escalations change the outcome.

Changing the pattern reduces the long‑term organisational cost.

1. The Cost of Misunderstood Conflict

Across Europe, organisations consistently underestimate the cost of unresolved interpersonal friction. Employees spend significant time managing conflict that rarely reaches formal escalation but steadily erodes productivity, trust, and retention.

Managers and HR professionals report devoting a substantial proportion of their working time to handling the downstream effects of these issues: complaints, disengagement, sickness absence, stalled projects, and avoidable turnover.

What makes these costs particularly hard to address is that the underlying problem is often misdiagnosed. Organisations typically frame difficulties as a matter of:

• Poor communication
• Lack of feedback skills
• Insufficient confidence
• Individual personality issues
• Isolated behavioural incidents

These explanations feel reasonable and non‑threatening. They also fail repeatedly.

When the same conflicts resurface, when the same individuals dominate discussions despite multiple interventions, or when talented employees quietly disengage or leave, organisations sense that something deeper is at play – but lack a language to explain it.

2. From Incidents to Patterns: A Power‑Dynamics Lens

The Red‑Liner Model (RLM) starts from a different premise:

what looks like a series of unrelated incidents is often part of a single, coherent behavioural pattern.

Defining terms

Red‑Line Behaviour is not a diagnosis or a personality label. It is a descriptive term for behaviour that is seeks to secure dominance in interpersonal situations – especially when challenged or under pressure.

Such behaviour may include (but is not limited to):

• Dismissing or minimising others’ contributions
• Interrupting or talking over colleagues
• Shifting goalposts during discussions
• Playing the victim when challenged
• Using emotional pressure (anger, guilt, withdrawal) to regain control
• Constantly adapting tactics when a particular approach stops working

Crucially, these behaviours are often plausibly deniable, socially disguised, and individually defensible. In isolation, each instance appears minor. The pattern is difficult to spot because of the shifting tactics. However, over time, as a pattern, they have a profound impact.

The RLM reframes the question from “What is wrong with this person?” to:

“What pattern of power behaviour is operating here – and how is it being adapted when challenged?”

3. Why Communication Training Alone Isn’t Enough

Most workplace interventions focus on what should happen in ideal conditions: respectful dialogue, clear feedback, active listening, escalation routes. These are necessary but insufficient.

Alone, these techniques often fail because they do not address what happens in the moment when power is contested.

Under pressure, dominance‑seeking behaviour tends to intensify, not soften. When challenged, Red‑Line behaviour rarely stops immediately. Instead, people often:

• Increase emotional intensity
• Shift tactics
• Escalate subtly (or sometimes overtly)
• Test whether boundaries are firm or moveable

This is why many well‑intentioned attempts to “set boundaries” appear to backfire. People try, experience a worsening of the interaction, and often conclude that the approach was wrong – when in fact the opposite is true.

 4. The Doors Analogy: Why Most Interventions Fail

To explain this dynamic, the RLM uses a simple diagnostic metaphor.

A person engaging in power games typically has multiple behavioural “exit doors” available to them to bypass boundaries. When one door is closed – for example, a direct challenge – they simply use another: humour, victimhood, anger, procedural arguments, or appeals to authority.

Closing only some doors changes nothing.

What this produces organisationally is a predictable cycle:

1. Someone attempts a boundary
2. The behaviour temporarily escalates or shifts
3. The person setting the boundary feels they have “made things worse”
4. They weaken or abandon the boundary
5. The pattern continues – often more entrenched than before

The RLM does not teach people to avoid this escalation. Instead, it predicts it.

5. Some Escalation is a Phase, Not a Failure

One of the most important reframes for organisations is this:

Initial escalation is not evidence that a boundary‑led approach is failing.
It is evidence that the old pattern is being challenged.

When clear boundaries are applied consistently, Red‑Liners typically respond by intensifying the behaviours that previously worked for them – anger, guilt, indignation, or claims of unfair treatment. This phase is uncomfortable but temporary.

The Boundary‑Led Response Method (BLR) equips people to respond effectively in the moment to this reality. They are taught:

• That things may get worse before they get better
• How to recognise certain escalations as a learning phase
• How to respond firmly to shifting behaviours without counter‑escalating
• How to maintain consistency long enough for the pattern to collapse

Over time, as dominance‑seeking strategies repeatedly fail to produce the desired outcome, they are abandoned. Not because the person using Red‑Line behaviour has been persuaded, but because the behaviour no longer works.

This is how the approach becomes preventative.

6. From Individual Interactions to Organisational Impact

At scale, this dynamic has significant implications.

When many people across an organisation understand power dynamics and respond consistently:

• Power games lose their effectiveness
• Fewer incidents escalate to HR
• Teams can and do police their own interactions
• Psychological safety improves without reliance on constant intervention
• Retention increases, particularly among highly capable but previously marginalised employees

The new culture of firm, appropriate responses to micro‑power-plays at the interactional level leads to long‑term de‑escalation at the organisational level.

The key is not confrontation, but consistency grounded in understanding.

7. What the Red‑Liner Model and the Boundary Led Response Method Actually Provide

To be explicit, this work is not:

• Sensitivity training
• Script‑based communication training
• Assertiveness coaching
• Therapy or mediation
• A list of techniques detached from context

Instead, organisations gain:

• A shared conceptual language for power dynamics
• Predictive understanding of behaviour under pressure
• The Boundary‑Led Response Method: a structured, non‑escalatory way of responding to power-plays in real time
• Increased confidence as a by‑product of clarity, not bravado

The Red‑Liner Model explains what is happening.

The Boundary‑Led Response Method changes what happens next.

Conclusion: A Different Kind of Capability

In knowledge‑heavy, ambiguity‑rich environments, interpersonal dynamics are not “soft issues.” They are core infrastructure.

Organisations that continue to treat power dynamics as a matter of personality, communication style, or isolated misconduct will continue to pay the cost – quietly and repeatedly.

Those that invest in power‑dynamics literacy gain something rarer:

• Fewer escalations
• Greater stability under pressure
• Teams that can think and act clearly when it matters most

Not by avoiding conflict – but by understanding the root causes well enough to meaningfully resolve conflict at its source.

Appendix: Some statistics

Studies from European and international sources indicate:

• Managers spend up to 20–30% of their time dealing with conflict and its consequences
• Employees experiencing persistent subtle bias or exclusion are far more likely to disengage or leave, even when formal complaints are rare
• Replacing a skilled knowledge worker typically costs 50–200% of salary when recruitment, onboarding, and lost productivity are included

These costs are rarely attributed to “power dynamics” – but they are often driven by them.