Position Before Power

Rank tells people what authority you have been given. Position reveals how much trust you have actually earned. The first is assigned. The second is built.

One of the phrases you hear pretty early in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is:

Like a lot of simple martial-arts advice, I understood the words long before I really started understanding what they meant.

When you are new, submissions are exciting. You remember the tap. You remember catching somebody.

You remember thinking:

I am getting less interested in that.

Right now, I am much more interested in something quieter.

Can I get to a dominant position against somebody who is actively trying to stop me?

And once I get there, can I keep it?

Five seconds.

Maybe longer.

Can I maintain the position without burning myself out? Can I make my training partner work harder to remove me than I have to work to stay?

Can I remain structurally sound enough that eventually they make a mistake because they are tired, uncomfortable, impatient, or forced into increasingly bad choices?

They call it, "cooking the beans..."

If the submission eventually appears, great.

But I am starting to see the submission differently.

I do not want it to feel like:

Ha, I snatched your arm.

I want it to feel like the obvious consequence of everything that happened before it.

The position created the pressure.

The pressure created the reaction.

The reaction created the opening.

And the opening created the submission.

That is position before submission.

The visible result gets the applause. The quiet position made it possible.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize I learned the same lesson decades before BJJ.

I just did not have the language for it.

I learned it on construction sites.

The Chevrons and the Work

When most people hear the word position, they think of rank.

• Foreman
• Supervisor
• Manager
• Black belt
• Brown belt
• Sergeant
• Vice president
• CEO

Whatever.

The belt. The stripes. The title. The chevrons.

The visible symbols that tell everybody:

This person occupies this position.

And those symbols can matter.

A foreman has responsibilities that I do not have.

A black belt has earned something I have not.

A supervisor has legitimate authority.

Rank is real.

But rank is not the whole thing.

I learned that early on.

Sometimes the person with the highest formal rank was the last person I should ask about how to actually do the work.

That was not necessarily because he was incompetent.

Sometimes it had simply been years since his hands had touched the tools.

He had moved into another role.

He had developed other skills — planning, coordination, manpower, schedules, dealing with other trades, management, paperwork, putting out fires.

And somewhere along the way, the detailed installation skills had gotten rusty or been forgotten.

So when I needed to know how to actually get the work done, I learned to look for somebody else.

The journeyman who had done it twenty times.

The guy who could look at the print, look at the installation, and tell me not just what to do but why.

Those became my advisors and mentors.

They helped me learn the work rather than simply obey the hierarchy.

That was my first real encounter with the difference between assigned rank and earned position.

The boss had the title.

The journeyman had the knowledge.

And when the problem was at the tool level, the journeyman was the person who actually owned the position.

On jobsites, you could see it if you paid attention.

Something would go wrong.

A worker would have a problem.

They would not understand the print.

The installation was fighting them.

Something was not working.

And instead of asking the person who was technically in charge, they would walk across the job and find somebody else.

Not necessarily somebody with a bigger title.

The person they trusted.

The person who usually knew.

Or, just as importantly, the person who knew enough to say:

I do not know, but let’s figure it out.

When I was coming up through the trade, that was the person I looked for.

I did not automatically follow the person with the chevrons.

I looked for the person who actually owned the position.

The person who understood the work.

The person who could explain why something was happening instead of simply telling me what to do.

The person who could help me solve the immediate problem and maybe make me a little better so that next time I would not need to ask.

That is the person I wanted to learn from.

Not All Foremen Were the Same Rank

Later, I became a foreman myself.

And I learned another uncomfortable lesson.

Not all foremen were the same rank, even when we all carried the same title.

On paper, we were equals.

In reality, there was a huge range.

Most got by.

They kept the job moving well enough.

They filled the role.

But only a small number were people I really wanted to learn from.

The good ones saw farther.

They understood sequencing.

They knew the work well enough to anticipate problems.

They could communicate.

They could organize people without constantly creating chaos.

They knew when to step in and when to let somebody figure something out.

They could make the people around them better.

And then there were the others.

I learned from them too.

Mostly what not to do.

Two people can carry identical titles.

One is merely occupying the box on the org chart — reacting to problems, surviving the day, fulfilling the minimum expectations of the role.

The other is demonstrating something more — technical understanding, anticipation, judgment, calm under pressure, the ability to teach, the ability to develop other workers, the ability to see several moves ahead.

The chevrons are the symbol. The work is the substance.

And the gap between the two is where real position either exists or does not.

People Vote With Their Feet

After enough years, something strange happened.

People started coming to me.

Not because I announced that I was the expert.

Not because I was necessarily their foreman.

Not because I outranked their tool partner or supervisor.

Sometimes I did not.

But somebody would have a problem.

They did not trust that the person immediately around them could help.

So they came over and asked me.

I am not saying that to puff up my chest.

In fact, the interesting thing is that I did not decide I occupied that position.

They did.

They voted with their feet.

Enough repetitions had created enough evidence that they thought:

That is a very different kind of authority.

It is quieter.

You do not wear it.

You do not stitch it onto your sleeve.

You do not wrap it around your waist.

You earn it one problem at a time.

One explanation at a time.

One difficult project at a time.

One moment when you stay calm while somebody else is confused.

One time when you admit you do not know instead of bullshitting.

One time when you help somebody become more capable rather than making them dependent on you.

That is position.

Three Kinds of Position

Here is how I think about it now.

There are three layers.

Assigned rank

Someone gives you a role.

Foreman. Supervisor. Manager. Black belt. Team lead.

The organization or system recognizes your authority.

That matters.

I am not here to tell you titles are meaningless.

Functional competence

Can you actually perform, understand, diagnose, or explain the work relevant to the situation?

This may exist above you, below you, or beside you in the formal hierarchy.

The boss may have skills you do not have.

The journeyman may have skills the boss’s current role no longer requires.

Earned position

Over repeated experience, people learn:

When this kind of problem happens, I trust that person.

That trust becomes quiet authority.

Nobody has to announce it.

People reveal it by where they go for help.

The title can demand compliance.

It cannot manufacture trust.

Trust is built one honest answer at a time.

Chasing the Submission

I think a lot of people get this backward.

They want power first.

They want the promotion.

The title.

The belt.

The office.

The authority.

They want people to listen.

They want the visible markers of position before they have built the position itself.

They are chasing the submission without controlling the position.

And sometimes they get it.

People can get promoted before they are ready.

People can inherit authority.

People can have titles bestowed upon them.

People can manipulate their way into influence.

People can even technically win while having very little control over the underlying situation.

But that kind of power is fragile.

Because eventually reality starts applying resistance.

The employee asks the question you cannot answer.

The project starts going sideways.

The student does not respond the way you expected.

The person you are supposedly leading stops trusting your judgment.

Now the chevrons cannot save you.

Real position works differently.

You do the work.

You develop competence.

You develop judgment.

You learn to explain.

You learn when to act.

You learn when not to act.

You learn enough humility to say:

I do not know.

And enough capability to add:

But I know how we can find out.

Then people start trusting you.

And once they trust you, influence starts showing up without you having to announce it.

That is power.

Not in the cartoon sense.

Not domination.

Not making people obey you.

The power to move something forward.

The power to help.

The power to make confusion clearer.

The power to make somebody else more capable.

The power to be heard when the consequences matter.

That kind of power usually comes after position.

Position before power.

Resistance Reveals the Position

It is the same lesson BJJ is trying to beat into me.

A submission is a visible event.

A tap happens.

Everybody knows who tapped.

It is easy to count.

That makes it seductive.

But positional control is quieter.

It may look like very little is happening.

Yet that quiet control is what determines the range of available outcomes.

On the mat, a dominant position does not become real because someone labels it mount or back control.

It becomes real because the other person is actively resisting and you can still control it.

The resistance reveals whether the position is merely named or actually owned.

Same thing on the jobsite.

Formal authority says:

You are the foreman.

Reality asks:

Can you actually occupy the position when resistance shows up?

Can you solve problems?

Make decisions?

Explain?

Adapt?

Stay calm?

Organize people?

Earn trust?

Make the team better?

The resistance reveals whether the position is labeled or owned.

If I rush for the submission before I have control, I am gambling.

Maybe I catch it.

Maybe I do not.

Maybe I create enough space for my training partner to escape and reverse everything.

But if I earn the position first?

If I stay patient?

If I can control the dominant position while somebody is actively trying to take it away?

Now I am learning something deeper.

The submission becomes less important.

The control becomes the evidence.

And eventually the finish becomes a consequence of that control.

The same thing is true off the mat.

Titles, promotions, belts, offices, awards, and authority are visible.

Competence develops mostly where nobody is applauding.

Learning.

Repetition.

Mistakes.

Asking questions.

Doing difficult work.

Helping others.

Seeing patterns.

Building judgment.

The visible symbol is downstream of a lot of invisible work.

You can chase the visible symbols.

Or you can build the substance underneath them.

You can chase the title.

Or become the person everybody quietly seeks when something actually needs to work.

You can chase authority.

Or develop so much competence, capability, clarity, and usefulness that people naturally begin granting you influence.

Ideally, the two come together.

The rank matches the competence.

The title matches the responsibility.

The belt matches the capability.

The chevrons match the person wearing them.

That is probably the healthiest version.

Healthy leadership has formal authority plus earned trust.

But if I had to choose where to start?

I would start underneath.

I would start with the work.

Because position is not rank.

Position is the capacity to get shit done — and enough earned trust that people know it.

Power comes later.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Think of one area where you want more influence.

Maybe work.

Your family.

The mat.

Your craft.

Your business.

Your community.

Ask yourself four questions.

What position am I trying to claim?

Be specific.

Not:

I want people to respect me.

What do you actually want to be trusted to do?

What evidence have I earned that I can actually occupy it?

Not what title do you have.

What can you repeatedly do?

What problems can you actually solve?

Where are you still relying more on aspiration than evidence?

Who do I seek out when I actually need help — and why?

This one is important.

Pay attention to who you instinctively trust when something matters.

What do they have that makes you walk across the job to find them?

That is what earned position looks like from the outside.

It tells you what you are probably trying to build in yourself.

What capability would make someone seek me out for the same reason?

If the chevrons disappeared tomorrow, would anybody still walk across the job to find you?

If the answer is no, you know what to work on next.

If the answer is yes, you already have something real.

Then go earn that capability.

Not the applause.

Not the title.

Not the chevrons.

The position.

Because if the position becomes strong enough, the power has a funny habit of finding you.

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​Steve Magness — Do Hard Things​

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Chuck