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You've Got the Power
By Melanie Bell, Mindtools Content Writer and Editor
Recently, I sat in the audience as a group of actors performed the musical I cowrote for the Brighton Fringe festival. An older woman, Joan, had just completed a transformative journey through another world, Alice in Wonderland-style, to regain her confidence after her husband left her.
Joan and her otherworldly guide faced the crowd and sang, “I have the power in my weakest hour.”
Writing and producing this show was a deep dive into the idea of personal power – something we all have, though we may not always feel like we do. I was interested in showcasing the agency and star power of an older woman onstage, something that is all too rarely highlighted in the media.
And my show’s protagonist, Joan, began the story by feeling disempowered and struggling to embody power within herself. Perhaps that’s relatable to you – many of us have been there! Despite her privilege, and her glittering past as a dancer in London, Joan needed a sort of magic to get her in touch with her power again.
If you’re leading or managing a team, your role involves power, whether its exercise feels natural to you or not. So how do you tap into a healthy version of power within yourself? And how do you manage it responsibly?
What Is Power, Anyway?
Leadership consultant Emmanuel Gobillot defines power as “impact and influence – it’s not power over people, it’s power in terms of impacting and influencing other people.”
This can be tricky to get right. A survey from the Center for Creative Leadership found that 28 percent of participants believe that power is misused by leaders in their organizations, and only 29 percent of respondents said that their organizations teach leaders to use their power effectively.
More than 50 years ago, social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven studied power in leadership. They described six bases of power, not all of which had a positive influence.
- Legitimate: power from the belief that a leader has the right to make demands and expect compliance
- Reward: power from the ability to offer compensations for compliance
- Expert: power stemming from skills and knowledge
- Referent: power from social perceptions of attractiveness, worth and respectability
- Coercive: power from belief that one can punish others for noncompliance
- Informational: power from controlling the information that others need to get things done.
See how this can get complicated?
Where Does Your Power Come From?
We can further group these bases of power into positional and personal power.
Positional power comes from someone’s social positioning. It can include legitimate power (backed up by a title or role, such as being a manager or CEO), reward power, coercive power, and informational power.
As a manager, you may be able to readily identify forms of positional power provided by your role. Consider what say you have over rewards and access to information. And if coercive power enters the picture, note that it’s problematic and easily abused.
Just because your position might enable you to threaten or punish team members doesn’t mean you should do so – and using it too much means you risk team members leaving.
If you look only to your position for power at work, you miss out on more connected, robust forms of leadership. That’s where personal power comes in.
The knowledge and skills that make up expert power help you to understand situations and problem solve. When you bring genuine expertise, your team members are more likely to trust and value your leadership.
And you can build referent power by connecting with others and creating a culture where they feel positively. If you bring referent power, team members identify with and like you. But you need to build on that likeability with substance and ethics.
Effective Use of Power
Research on the relationship between leaders’ power and followers’ motivations found a difference between the impact of hard power and soft power.
When followers perceived leaders using hard power – which includes reward, coercive and legitimate power and requires higher levels of compliance – they were generally less motivated.
When they perceived leaders as using soft power – including expert, referent and informational power, all allowing greater perceived freedom – followers experienced higher motivation.
Interestingly, a review of recent research found little evidence that a high level of power makes leaders more effective in motivating followers, but seeing power as responsibility does help leaders to inspire contributions from their followers.
Where’s My Power, Again?
What to do if you’re struggling to summon a feeling of power to match the leadership that others expect of you?
You can start by taking a look at the forms of power discussed above. Which ones come most easily? Are you using them for the benefit of your team? Are you using too many forms of hard power, or neglecting some soft ones? Are you taking a leaf out of Spider-Man’s book and viewing your power as a responsibility?
And if you, like the character Joan in my play, lack confidence or feel unworthy, take a look at our content on overcoming impostor syndrome. Impostor feelings are very common, and all the more so when your professional role is high profile.
Note that women leaders, and other leaders from marginalized groups, tend to experience more impostor feelings because they encounter more bias. It’s easier to feel like an impostor when others are less willing to respect or hand power to you automatically.
What’s Next?
For more on regaining a sense of power if you’re not feeling it, see our article What to Do When You’ve Lost Your Confidence as a Leader.
And perhaps get an overview of French and Raven’s Five Forms of Power, or dive deep into Building Expert Power.
And for a more in-depth exploration of understanding and using power, see our video with Emmanuel Gobillot on Power: Where it Comes From and How to Use It.
Tip of the Week
First Things First – Prioritizing Your Priorities
By Kevin Dunne, Mindtools Content Editor and Writer
Despite my younger self never paying any attention to my dad’s “encouragement” to “get my priorities straight,” it turns out, as you’d expect, he was right.
As well as helping to sort your life out, getting your priorities straight is a vital component of time management.
It’s a skill for creating calmness and space so you can focus your energy and attention on the things that really matter.
It brings order to chaos, reduces stress, and drives successful conclusions.
This might mean using Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle, where you take care first of things that are both urgent and important.
Or the Boston Matrix, which prioritizes opportunities based on the attractiveness of a market and your ability to take advantage of it.
Whatever the task or project in hand, there is a prioritization technique that can help you work more efficiently, make better use of your resources, and achieve your goals more effectively.
Just make it a priority to find the right one.
For a wider review of tools that could help, see our article Prioritization.
Pain Points Podcast
What's your leadership or management style? Do you rely on "command-and-control"? Or, do you lean more toward collaboration, compassion and care?
On the podcast this week, Dr Will Parks promotes the latter approach – something he calls "graceful leadership." Find out how it's helped him in his role with UNICEF, on the front line in Iraq and elsewhere. And learn how you can benefit from working and living with more grace.
Subscribe Today
Video of the Week
Beating Burnout With Sharon Aneja
Sharon Aneja spends her days helping people to overcome burnout. But how can we stop it before it starts?
In this expert video, discover the red flags, warning signs, and solutions for beating burnout.
Watch Now
News Roundup
This Week's Global Workplace Insights
Middle Managers Are Going Missing – and Get Missed
Global management consultants Korn Ferry have released the results of their annual survey – and the headline news is middle managers are going missing, and we have surprise leaders in the AI race.
After talking to of 15,000 professionals worldwide, Korn Ferry reported that 41 percent of employees said their organizations had “slashed management layers.”
This, say KF, means teams are “feeling lost,” executives are “stretched thin,” and “the organizational glue that holds companies together is dissolving.”
They point out the work managers did has landed on the desks of executives, with 47 percent of leaders surveyed admitting they weren’t sure they could “handle it all.”
KF’s survey also discovered that when it comes to harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence, it isn’t the established economic powerhouses you would expect boasting the most AI-ready workforces.
The U.S., Europe and Japan are all falling behind India and Brazil, where, KF reports, 75 percent of workers are getting “solid AI training.”
"Boreout": A Yawning Gap for Employers to Close
“Humans are wired to seek meaning and mastery. When roles become overly repetitive or devoid of feedback loops, employees experience what’s known as ‘motivational crowding out’.”
That is how University of Warwick business professor Ivo Vlaev describes the phenomenon workplace news portal WorkLife calls “boreout.”
It occurs, say WorkLife, when “employees feel disengaged and unmotivated due to lack of challenge or purpose.”
And it’s becoming a major problem, with the online outlet quoting a recent Gallup survey that reported an “11-year engagement low among U.S. workers.”
Notable warning signs are “decreased participation in company initiatives,” and “minimal ambition for career advancement.”
Evidence-based solutions to combat “boreout” suggested by WorkLife include:
- adopting day-to-day learning into employee workflows rather than mandated courses
- creating learning environments that accommodate different learning needs
- redesigning roles and development pathways for staff
- tracking meaningful metrics like engagement scores and responses to targeted survey questions.
The bottom line is: work needs meaning.
For more guidance and advice on how to engage staff, see our article An Overview of Employee Engagement.
See you next week for more member-exclusive content and insight from the Mindtools team!
