Working without Leverage: Insights about networked communication from the world of international development

31 July 2025 Reading Time: 5 minutes

by Pascal Corbé:

Over the past two and a half decades, I’ve worked in the field of development cooperation communications—mostly in network-based settings where traditional hierarchies are absent, where collaboration cuts across institutions, and where formal authority plays only a minor role in achieving results. My job wasn’t to manage teams or sign off budgets. It was to communicate across differences, to align fragmented agendas, and to keep knowledge moving in ecosystems where no one really owns the process, but everyone has a stake in the outcome.

These environments aren’t chaotic. But they’re far from controlled. They depend on soft coordination, shared motivation, and the ability to engage people who don’t report to each other—and often don’t agree because they have very different interests. In short, they mirror what more and more corporate, international, and media-driven environments are beginning to experience today. A shift from command to influence, from hierarchy to mutual relevance.

Communications, in this context, isn’t just about messaging — though many players have not quite understood this. And it is also less about managing teams internally where you have disciplinary power. It’s about navigating relationships, power perceptions, and expectations that aren’t written down but deeply felt.

📡 Communications in Non-Hierarchical Systems

In the classical sense, communication is often seen as transmission. Send a message, measure its impact, report on reach. Sometimes it’s a bit more advanced and includes relay from the target groups who are actually asked what they want to know about one’s project, organisation, network or multi-stakeholder partnership. 

But even if you have elements of a more than one-directional information flow that model breaks down in networked systems, where success depends less on information flow only and more on connection—on creating a shared space of meaning, not just broadcasting intent.

In these environments, communication is never just about what’s said. Even information as such is not the main currency that buys you influence anymore, attention is. And attention in complex settings, on the other hand, is never gained as if you’re selling a fast moving consumer good on Instagram using a sales funnel, counting views. These are the small coins. You want the big notes of the currency “attention“. That is understanding and buy-in.

It’s all about how people interpret your role, your access, your ability to make things move. And often, those interpretations diverge sharply from reality.

Perceived Power—and What It Taught Me

One of the more formative phases of my work took place at a foundation widely viewed as a donor. Even though I had no authority over funding decisions, people regularly approached me with the assumption that I could “make things happen.” I explained, often with full transparency, that I wasn’t in charge of budgets. But the perception stuck, or maybe they simply thought I was trying to make my life easier by saying I had no power over resource allocation. The point was I wasn’t approached as a person—I was approached as a potential shortcut to resources.

This wasn’t deception. It wasn’t even unkind. But it was strategic. People engaged with me based on what they hoped I could do, not what I said I could do. And because the power they perceived wasn’t real, I couldn’t fulfill what they were hoping for—yet I still had to keep them engaged and contributing.

It took me years to fully grasp how deep this went. And how little the truth—explaining my actual position—mattered when people had already decided what I represented.

This experience has stayed with me, particularly when I now look at internal collaboration models in other sectors. People don’t act on your formal job description—they act on what they think you can give them, or the chance that you could maybe give them. And navigating that tension with clarity, fairness, and a long view is part of what communication professionals must learn to do—especially in roles where influence is more important than enforcement.

Why This Matters Beyond Development Cooperation

Much of what I’ve experienced in development cooperation communications mirrors challenges now surfacing across corporate and media sectors:

• Internal communications teams supporting multiple departments with no decision powers
• Consultants managing processes across business units without line authority, their clients using juniors to “lead“ them
• Cross-sector partnerships where outcomes depend on buy-in, not instruction
• International brand teams balancing conflicting stakeholder expectations

In all these scenarios, formal mandates are thin, and shared understanding becomes the real currency. Just like in development cooperation, people will only engage when they see value—and often that value is bound up in how they perceive your influence, not just your informational expertise, your cross-cultural expertise.

That’s where communications steps in—not as a megaphone, but as a means of subtle coordination, careful listening, and long-term trust-building.

The Marketing Trap

One of the recurring problems in development cooperation communications is its confusion with marketing. Too often, communication is reduced to justifying past actions—highlighting where funds went, which outputs were produced, how impact was achieved. It becomes a kind of retroactive validation of a theory of change, wrapped in celebratory language.

But that’s not strategic communication. That’s tactical reputation maintenance. Real communication in networked environments should not just promote past activities—it should shape understanding, prepare the ground for future collaboration, and invite dialogue across differences.

If we want communications to be meaningful in multi-actor environments, they can’t be an afterthought or an obligation. They must become part of the process, not just the proof of its success.

Investor relations in the corporate world is about reporting quarterly numbers AND future prospects. What is in the pipeline? Will it be worth investing? International donor coordination efforts in the development field have never advanced to an exchange about what each one is planning to do. Donor focal points meet in platforms only to realise that they’re standing on each other’s feet and cannot do anything about it since the planning phase is finished and what is signed off is nearly impossible to change.

Working Without Leverage

The core insight I’ve gained is this: You can accomplish a lot when people believe you’re someone who can move things. But when that belief is misplaced—or when you lack the leverage they assume—you’re in a uniquely difficult position. You must still build alignment. You must still facilitate progress. And you must do it without the tools people think you have.

This is true for anyone working across silos, managing “internal clients,” or advising without control. And it’s a growing reality in more and more industries, especially as hierarchies flatten and stakeholder ecosystems grow more complex.

In such situations, your effectiveness hinges on how well you:

• Interpret the expectations projected onto you
• Maintain clarity without alienating potential partners (for example by trying to leverage some  angle like having access to resources)
• Shape a space where people feel heard, even if they’re not getting what they came for

These are not soft skills. They are strategic ones.

Final Reflection

Development cooperation is often seen as a sector apart—technical, bureaucratic, complex. But in how it handles communication in networked, power-diffuse settings, it has a lot to teach us. Not everything in the sector works well. But where it works, it offers a model of communications as relationship-building, not reputation-polishing.

We live in a world where fewer and fewer decisions can be pushed through by fiat. Where influence is earned, not declared. And where messaging is no longer about reach, but about relevance and resonance.

In that world, development cooperation communications—at its best—offers a roadmap.

Not because it’s more advanced. It isn’t and compromises are rarely seen as a win.

But because it has long had to work without levers.

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Pascal Corbé is a leader in development communication and is based in Germany.  He is a Strategic Columnist and #WeLeadComms honoree.

Written by: Editor