When Hierarchy Only Exists If You Believe in It

Based on a LinkedIn post originally published on 20 March 2026

A few years ago, while managing a DevOps team at a very large start-up, I was invited to attend a company-wide global event in San Francisco.

My hotel was close to the venue. Thanks to jet lag, I was awake much earlier than expected and had nothing particularly useful to do.

I decided to walk over and look around while the event space was still being prepared.

At one point, I noticed an older gentleman sitting alone at a table. Apart from a few people organising the venue, there was almost nobody else around.

I am naturally fairly extroverted, so I collected some breakfast—the food was already available—and joined him.

We began talking.

A conversation without titles

He was funny, relaxed and easy to speak with.

Our conversation had nothing to do with company strategy, technology or careers. We spoke about life, travel and whatever observations emerged naturally.

I did not ask what position he held. He did not ask how senior I was. There was no exchange of professional status before the conversation was allowed to begin.

For a while, it was simply a conversation between two people sharing a table early in the morning.

As time passed, more people began arriving and joining us.

That was when I noticed something unusual. Many of the new arrivals appeared to be directors, vice presidents and other senior leaders.

A few internal alarm bells began to sound.

I still did not know who the gentleman was, but the composition of the table suggested that I had wandered into a more significant gathering than I had realised.

I politely thanked him for the enjoyable conversation and moved on.

The person on the stage

Later, the event began officially. The company presentation started, and the same man walked onto the stage.

He was the founder of the company, which he had established more than 45 years earlier.

Suddenly, the morning scene made sense:

What I had seen:
An approachable person sitting alone at breakfast

What others had seen:
The company founder surrounded by senior leadership

Same table
Same conversation
Completely different organisational meaning

The interaction itself had not changed. My understanding of its status had.

When a story becomes a political act

Later, in a moment of questionable judgement, I told some peers what had happened. I expected the story to produce a laugh.

That was not quite the reaction.

The atmosphere became uncomfortable. Some responses felt less like amusement and more like suspicion or jealousy.

What I had experienced as an accidental and pleasant conversation was interpreted by others as something calculated: an attempt to gain visibility, position myself near power or create a career advantage.

My intent had been social. The organisational interpretation was strategic.

This was one of my clearest early reminders of how company politics changes the meaning assigned to ordinary human behaviour.

Intent and perception follow different paths

In organisations, people do not have direct access to one another’s intentions. They interpret visible behaviour through their own experience, expectations and incentives.

The same act can therefore produce several competing explanations:

VISIBLE BEHAVIOUR
Employee speaks with company founder
              |
       +------+------+------+
       |             |      |
       v             v      v
Human curiosity   Networking  Career positioning
       |             |      |
Authentic intent  Neutral   Political interpretation

The observer often selects the explanation most consistent with how they personally understand the organisation.

Someone who sees every senior relationship as a strategic asset may find it difficult to believe that another person approached the same relationship without calculation.

We frequently interpret other people’s behaviour through the motives that would have produced the same behaviour in us.

Hierarchy changes behaviour before anyone gives an instruction

Formal hierarchy defines authority and responsibility. Informal hierarchy changes how people speak, where they sit and whom they approach.

A title can alter an interaction before the person holding it has said anything.

When employees know that someone is a founder, executive or board member, they may:

• become more cautious;
• change their vocabulary;
• avoid disagreement;
• attempt to make a favourable impression;
• or avoid the person completely.

I had spoken freely because I did not possess the information that would have activated those behaviours.

Ignorance of his status had temporarily removed the hierarchy from the conversation.

Without title information:
Person <--------------------> Person

After title information:
Employee -------- hierarchy --------> Founder

The people had not changed. The mental model surrounding them had.

Organisational status is real—but not complete

It would be naïve to claim that hierarchy is imaginary.

Senior leaders control resources, influence careers and make decisions whose consequences reach many people. Power differences are real and should not be ignored.

But status is not the complete identity of the person holding it.

A founder can also be someone who enjoys breakfast conversation. A vice president can have an ordinary sense of humour. A junior employee can offer an observation worth hearing.

Healthy organisations allow these realities to coexist.

They preserve clear accountability without forcing every human interaction to become a performance of rank.

The political cost of visibility

Visibility inside a company can create opportunity, but it can also create suspicion.

Employees may assume that proximity to senior leadership reflects ambition, favouritism or access unavailable to others. Sometimes that interpretation is justified. Organisational advancement is not always distributed fairly, and informal relationships can influence formal decisions.

But assuming that every interaction is calculated produces another problem: authenticity itself becomes difficult to recognise.

If every conversation is interpreted as networking,
then curiosity appears manipulative.

If every question is interpreted as positioning,
then participation appears political.

If every senior relationship is interpreted as advantage,
then ordinary human contact becomes unsafe.

In such a culture, people begin managing appearances more carefully than relationships.

Leaders influence whether hierarchy becomes a barrier

Senior leaders cannot eliminate the power attached to their roles, but they can influence how that power is experienced.

They can make interaction safer by:

• speaking with people outside their normal leadership circle;
• asking genuine questions rather than performing accessibility;
• listening without turning every conversation into an evaluation;
• inviting disagreement;
• and ensuring that informal access does not become an exclusive route to formal opportunity.

The founder I met that morning was relaxed and approachable. He did not introduce himself through status or make the conversation feel like an audience with authority.

That made an ordinary exchange possible—at least until I learned who he was.

Curiosity is not a career strategy

Some people navigate organisations by studying titles, influence and advancement paths. Others begin with the person in front of them.

Neither approach is automatically right or wrong. Professional relationships matter, and thoughtful networking is a legitimate part of a career.

The difficulty arises when one model is used to explain everyone else’s behaviour.

My decision to join that table was not a carefully designed visibility strategy. It was the behaviour of an extroverted person who saw someone sitting alone and preferred conversation to silence.

Learning the gentleman’s identity did not make the original interaction less authentic.

It only changed how the story was interpreted by the surrounding organisation.

What I carried forward

The experience taught me to be more aware of organisational perception. Intent matters morally, but perception affects practical outcomes.

That does not mean every action should be designed around the most suspicious possible observer. It means understanding that behaviour acquires meaning inside a system of titles, incentives and relationships.

The challenge is to remain authentic without being naïve:

Understand hierarchy
        +
Recognise political interpretations
        +
Avoid manufacturing relationships for appearance
        +
Continue treating people as people

I still believe that conversation, curiosity and basic human connection matter more than hierarchy.

If someone is sitting alone at a table, I will probably still go and say hello.

Titles shape organisations, but they do not need to define every interaction within them. Sometimes the most genuine conversations happen before anyone explains who is important.

AI Assistance Disclosure

This article is based on my original ideas, experience, analysis and conclusions. Artificial intelligence tools were subsequently used as editorial and research assistants to review grammar and wording, improve structure and presentation, organise some arguments into clearer logical sections, and help review references to legal, regulatory and technical concepts.

Where relevant, factual and regulatory references were checked against the sources cited in the article. AI assistance does not replace professional legal, regulatory, financial or technical advice, and the final selection, interpretation, opinions and conclusions presented here remain my own.