Colleagues don’t follow you just because you asked. They move when they understand why, when they trust you and when it matters to them. That is what leading without authority comes down to.
You describe the tasks clearly. You agree on time and budget. And still colleagues don’t deliver what you asked for. To them, your deadline is a suggestion, and they seem busy with other things. Sound familiar? I hear it often. People then ask me, very politely: “How do I lead without authority?”
At Amsterdam Business Forum 2026, several speakers took on that question. In this article I share what I learned from them. And you get a step-by-step plan you can start using tomorrow.
Leading without authority starts with trust
Ahmed Aboutaleb explained how little formal power a Dutch mayor actually has. Even as mayor of Rotterdam, from 2009 to 2024, he could not force a solution when interests clashed. He had to persuade people to move in the same direction. That works best when they trust your judgement and believe in where you are heading. He told colourful stories about going out to dinner with all kinds of people, to get to know them and build trust.
People have two ears and one mouth, he joked. That says something about how much you should listen and how much you should talk. If you want to get something done, listen twice as much as you speak. People who feel heard are more willing to help you.
Focus on goals, not tasks
Seth Godin talked about AI. In his view, we should stop seeing our jobs as a series of tasks and take on projects instead. Own the result, instead of just carrying out tasks. Ticking off tasks feels good. But a team of 10,000 AI interns has just joined. They are not very good, but they work for almost nothing and they love doing tasks. Can your work be reduced to a checklist? Then, according to Godin, sooner or later someone will find a computer that does it cheaper than you.
That insight matters for every leader, with or without formal authority. People only add value beyond AI when they own the result. My translation for leaders: steer on goals, not tasks. After all, you can tick off every task and still miss the result. Say a team delivers a new service on time, but the colleagues who have to work with it are not ready. Every task has a green tick. The service is still useless. An AI intern doesn’t notice. A colleague who steers on the goal does. They bring the users in, ask what they need and adjust the work.
Let others question your judgement
Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, named an awkward habit. We expect leaders to know everything and to give a short yes or no to every question. According to her, that is a mistake. She used COVID as an example. In the first months nobody had the answers, and everyone could see it. So she kept sharing what her government knew, and also what it did not know yet. That was honest, she said, but it did more: it built trust and brought in the expertise she needed. The whole country became a bit of an epidemiologist. According to her, that created broad support for the cautious approach. She doesn’t claim every choice turned out well. Her point: asking questions and seeking advice made the decisions better. She remained responsible, but she carried that responsibility differently.
What does a development team gain from this? Every day, stakeholders ask such a team for certainty that nobody has. “When will it be done?” “Does this fit in the sprint?” “Will it also work with our legacy systems?” In that climate you learn that a confident answer is safer than an honest one. The result: a date nobody believes, an estimate with a generous margin, and a problem that only surfaces when it is too late.
A leader who says, “We don’t know this yet. Who knows more about it? And what is the cheapest way to find out?” gets something different. The security expert speaks up before the release. The operations colleague explains what goes wrong in production. The developer dares to say an assumption is wrong. This only works when people notice that their knowledge actually changes the decision. Otherwise they nod, stay quiet, and only call you when things go wrong.
Trust, and room to disagree
Dr. Eva de Mol invests in innovative companies. She judges start-up teams not only on their idea, but also on how they work together. In the pitch she simply asks: do you ever have conflict? Does the team answer, beaming, “No, we get along really well”? Then she knows enough. In her view, that is a problem. In an innovative team it has to be safe enough to challenge each other when the work isn’t going well. She means conflict about the work, not about the person. Her condition:
> “you need trust, you need psychological safety”
What does that look like in a development team?
- During a code review, a junior developer sees that the senior architect’s design won’t scale. They say so in the review, not after go-live.
- Someone says in the stand-up: “I don’t think this plan is feasible.” They get a question back instead of a sigh.
- A tester finds a blocking bug on Thursday afternoon, just before the demo. Nobody gives them an angry look for it.
Each time, someone doubts the proposal, not the person who made it. Whoever sees a problem can raise it while there is still time to act. That asks something of you as a leader. You make room for disagreement, you thank the person who disagrees, and then you help the team reach a decision. Because endless debate is not psychological safety. It is a way of avoiding, and often a sign that safety is missing.
What is your first step?
You learn this best by doing it. Pick one result that needs people you do not formally manage. Then walk through these six steps:
- Result: What do you want to achieve, and why does it matter?
- Whose trust do you need? Make a list.
- First person: Circle the person who matters most for the next step.
- What matters to that person? How does it connect to your result from step 1? What questions can you ask about it?
- Approach: When and how will you talk with that person?
- Preparation: How will you respond if it disappoints you, or goes differently than you expected?
Give step 4 extra attention. The answer may show you a better route to your result. Or it may reveal a constraint you overlooked. So go into the conversation to learn first, and only then to persuade. At the end, agree on a concrete action together.
Colleagues don’t do what you need. They do what they understand, trust and find important. Your job is to know what that is before you ask.