Question

create a 15- to 20-slide Microsoft^® PowerPoint^® presentation,

Explain power and compare how it relates to leadership

Analyze the five sources of power

Summarize the relationship between influence and power

Determine how relationships between leaders and staff affect influence and power

Cite a minimum of two references other than the text.

Answer 1

1,2,3 represent slide numbers.

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1.      Power

Power is capacity of a person to influence others to perform something in order to achieve results.

Organizations are organized entities created to achieve some objective and goals. They must perform to achieve those objectives and goals.

Organizations are nothing but people – so people employed also must achieve objectives and goals. In order to streamline this, organizations have hierarchies and structures. All the managers and supervisors must influence others to perform the tasks assigned to them to as to achieve their individual goals which consolidates into organizational goals. This capacity of a person to influence others to perform something in order to achieve results is called power.

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2.      Power & Leadership

In organizational structures, there are superiors (managers & supervisors) which are nominated by the organization to get the work done from the people reporting to them. This gives them power to get the job done, but that does not make them leader.

For a person to be leader, his subordinates must accept him or her as leader and follow the leader happily.

This is easier said than done as there are different conflict of interests for the individuals and the organizations. For example, if the organization wants some employees to work on a weekend, and if their manager can get the people to job on weekend ‘happily’, he can be called leader. If people are forced instead, then he is a mere manager using his powers.

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3.      Sources of Power

Following are the five sources of power:

1.      Expert Power

2.      Legitimate Power

3.      Referent Power

4.      Reward Power

5.      Coercive Power

These sources are explained and analyzed in following slides.

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4.      Legitimate Power

Legitimate power is achieved due to the position of the person.

It is based on where the person is in the organizational hierarchy.

A departmental manager has a power over the employees in that department

A functional head has power over all the employees in all departments under his function.

A CEO has power over all of the organization.

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5.      Expert Power

Expert power is derived from the knowledge and expertise that person holds.

Knowledge is the most important thing in performing as the results are based on the expertise.

The person with knowledge gains power as he is the most sought-after resource for the organization.

He also gains confidence of his subordinates, peers and also his superiors as they believe in his knowledge and capability to perform due to his expertise.

Expert power is considered the best form of power as it is long lasting.

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6.      Referent power

Referent power is derived from the relationship with others – subordinates, peers and superiors.

This is believed to be result of charismatic personality of the person because of which the person gains admiration, respect and trust in the organization.

Sometimes, the relationship with people with power can also result into referent power. In this case, his subordinates, peers and superiors value the person as they are concerned he or she may use the relationship with the person with power.

This power is not considered long lasting, though practiced at large in organizations.

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7.      Coercive power

The power of using force to get something done is called coercive power. The force is normally in the form of fear of threats and punishments.

This power requires a specific personality and some backing from the person with power in the organization. It can also be gained by interpretations of organizational policies and rules.

This power is useful when there is shortage of time to complete the tasks but this is not considered good power in long run and must be avoided.

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8.      Reward power

If the person has ability to reward a person, he or she automatically get the reward power as the subordinates will be willing to perform to get the reward.

This also creates a threat that the underperformers will not get rewards, so everyone gets motivated and perform.

The problem comes at the time of reward – those who get reward are happy but those who do not get awarded get demotivated and so this power also does not work in long run.

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9.      Relationship between influence and power

Power may results into influence. So power is the cause and influence in the result.

But this is not always true. If the subordinates are not influence by the person with power and do not follow him ‘happily’ then such power is of no use – this may not be called power at all.

If power results into influence than that is the real power.

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10. Relationship between leaders and staff affect influence and power - legitimate power

We will analyze this relationship based in the five powers.

In legitimate power, the leaders are normally managers or superiors who get their powers due to the position that they hold. In this case, the leaders use their legitimate powers to influence their staff to get the work done. Here the organizations normally have some framework publishing the legitimate powers that the leaders have. This is a commonly accepted relationship between leaders and staff and achieves good balance between power and influence. This can work for long term if followed in the organizational framework.

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11. Relationship between leaders and staff affect influence and power – Expert power

In case of expert power, the leader has got the expertise due to knowledge and experience – so that are highly respected by their staff members. This gives the leaders the best type of power to influence their staff.

The staff follows their expert leaders without much conflict as they believe that the expert will guide them at every step and the work will be performed without any issues.

In case of expert power, leaders can use the expert power to influence staff in the best possible way. This is also long term and beneficial to all including the organization.

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12. Relationship between leaders and staff affect influence and power – referent power

In case of referent power, the leaders influence staff mostly using their charismatic personality, communication skills, social behavior or relationships. This creates a good influence over the staff to get the things done, but this lasts only till the person can maintain his or her charisma.

As this relationship between leader and staff is function of leader’s charisma, it end soon after the leader loses his or her charisma. This can happen due to multiple reasons like leader’s health issues, personal issues, or the change in the social behaviors.

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13. Relationship between leaders and staff affect influence and power – Coercive power

As coercive power is based on leader’s ability to use force, show threats and punish, the relationship between leader and staff will always be distorted. This may not impact immediately as the staff will pretend to be influence and perform tasks with fear of leader’s force, threats and punishments. But ths staff will remain demotivated and will not perform on their own. The leader will need to be more and more coercive as time passes to be effective but all this ends with poor performers and unrecoverable damage to the organization.

This type of relationship must be avoided.

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14. Relationship between leaders and staff affect influence and power –Reward power

In case of reward power, the relationship between leaders and staff remains healthy in the beginning as the leader can show carrot of reward to influence the staff and get the work done.

The real problem comes when the reward is given, those who get rewarded can still be influenced by the leader but those who do not get reward, lose hopes , get demotivated, and no more get influenced by the leader.

As this relationship is based on rewards, it remains effective in influencing till the rewards are provided with higher incentives as time passes.

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15. The key to powers

In theory, there are five types of power, but in practice, every leader must find his own powers – combinations of the five powers plus any other powers that the person has to influence his staff members. The expert power must be the first preference and should be used as much as possible. Legitimate power is next in line which is also recommended to be used within organizational framework.

Referral and reward power should be used with caution, as those may back fire and create bigger problems. Used carefully, these powers can give good results though.

Coercive power should be seldom used and avoided at best.

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References Citation

1.      Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives,   WR Scott, GF Davis – 2015

2.      Power, S Lukes – 1986

3.      Leadership in organizations, GA Yukl – 2013

4.      Organizations: Structures, processes and outcomes, C Harper – 2015

5.      Charismatic leadership in organizations, JA Conger, RN Kanungo

6.      Intraorganizational influence tactics: Explorations in getting one's way, D Kipnis, SM Schmidt, I Wilkinson - Journal of applied psychology, 1980 - psycnet.apa.org