Management Today Book Series

Understanding Influence for Leaders at all Levels

Chapter 1: Power and influence
Extract

Prof Nick Forster works at the Graduate School of Management at the University of Western Australia. This is an edited extract from ‘Power and influence', the chapter he contributed to Understanding Influence for Leaders at all Levels, AIM Management Today Series (McGraw-Hill, 2005).

Where do power and influence come from? A close examination shows that there are just five sources of power and influence in organisations:

• Personal power : based on personal attributes and qualities, not reliant on formal or positional authority
• Expert power : derived from the possession of specific technical expertise and/or professional knowledge
• Positional power : derived from the formal structural power and authority of an office, position or role in an organisation
• Reward power : arises from the opportunities a leader has to use rewards as a way to influence people.
• Coercive power : the use of exlusion, threats, sanctions, pain and punishment to influence people's behaviour.

Which of the five forms of power are the most effective in influencing other people? A 1984 study of how 750 managers used power revealed that they typically used seven influencing strategies when dealing with their bosses, subordinates and co-workers. Ranked in order, these were:

• Using reason, data or logic (expert power)
• Friendliness and assertiveness (personal power)
• Forming coalitions with others (personal power)
• Bargaining and/or negotiation (expert and personal power)
• Ordering compliance (positional, reward and coercive power)
• Relying on the support of a higher authority (positional power)
• Sanctions or punishments (positional, reward and coercive power)

There is considerable research evidence to support the view that the use of reason and logic (expert power) is a powerful influencing strategy. Leaders and managers who use information, facts and data to support their decisions are rated far more highly by their subordinates, when compared to those who use either coercive or legitimate power to force through their ideas.

Managers who consistently use coercive or legitimate power have less motivated, more stressed and poorer performing employees. Those who habitually use force, coercion or Machiavellian strategies to drive through their decisions also end up making more bad decisions than good ones.

Coercive and legitimate power strategies also act as extrinsic motivators; that is, they simply reward compliance and punish inappropriate behaviours. Forty years research into motivation shows that these strategies are the least effective ways of motivating people because, over time, they diminish the capacity of individuals to change, improve and develop themselves.

By contrast, high intrinsic employee motivation (that is, the internal passion and commitment employees have about their work) is one of the primary drivers of both individual and organisational excellence.

So, in summary, the most effective and productive power and influence strategies are:

• using reason, data or logic (expert power)
• friendliness and assertiveness (personal power)
• forming coalitions with others (personal power)
• bargaining and/or negotiation (expert and personal power).

The least effective and most divisive power and influence strategies are:

• ordering compliance (legitimate, reward and coercive power)
• relying on the support of a higher authority (legitimate power)
• sanctions or punishments (legitimate and coercive power).

Effective leader and managers use personal and expert power as much as possible, but will occasionally draw on the other three if the situation demands it.

Although coercive or Machiavellian power strategies may have to be used in emergency or life-threatening situations, in most organisational contexts these strategies should only be used as a last resort because they are the most ineffective way of influencing others.