POWER

We all crave it to some extent, although those that have it sometimes wonder why.

A critical point that many who falsely claim leadership overlook is: you can’t be a leader if you have no followers. Many good leaders have developed their skills by learning from others as well, which means that they are likely to have been good followers along the way.

In his book Leadership: Theory and Practice, Northouse (2019) lists six bases of power:

• Referent Power - based on followers’ identification and liking for the leader.

• Expert Power - based on followers’ perceptions of the leader’s competence.

• Legitimate Power - associated with having status or formal job authority.

• Reward Power - derived from having the capacity to provide rewards to others.

• Coercive Power - derived from having the capacity to penalize or punish others.

• Information Power - derived from possessing knowledge that others want or need.

Think of the leader that wins the hearts and minds (referent) , or the one has the title (legitimate), or those who are obeyed out of fear (coercive), or has the right information to get the job done.

Of course the good leader knows how to exert multiple powers at the right time and in the right context. There is never a ‘one size fits all’ which is why we need to keep informed of the various tools available to us, so we can choose the right tool for the right job.

In the movie Moneyball, Brad Pitt’s character, Billy, realizes that he misidentified the power in the room after unsuccessfully negotiating a deal. He then approaches Jonah Hill’s character, Peter, when he realizes that this ‘unknown’ person in the room actually held the Expert Power which influenced the outcome. No decision was made without consulting Peter, the quiet guy up the back, whose knowledge enabled him to sway a room.

Now for a slight segue, who skim read the lists of powers but engaged when they recognised the moneyball illustration? As I mentioned in a previous article, I am a fan of Aristotle and agree where he notes that fiction can say more than historical facts, where it shows the thoughts and feelings on a topic.

I’ll admit it, good stories are my relaxation, although I tend to watch more tv than read books nowadays. (I’m over pretentious statements like the book is always better. Writers of the TV age, like Michael Crichton and Anthony Horowitz can often write screenplays better than books. Although I have to acknowledge that no movie maker has been able to capture the magic of George Orwell’s writings yet). 

Business parables picked up on this and started coming out a few years ago that acknowledged the benefit of storytelling to give context to their theories. Books like who moved my cheese, the iceberg is melting, and others. Many leadership theories found their voice in these parables.

In a recent Billions episode, a new boss has a conversation with an employee about trust, the boss is confused when the employee comments that they need a boss they can trust. The boss is even more perplexed when a second employee expresses a similar sentiments and asks of his colleague, “why do they keep saying that”. 

This episode was recorded in 2022. After the pandemic and around the time when the great resignation and skills shortage were in the business news in the U.S. Employers do well to realise that they have to earn the trust of their employees just as much as the other way around nowadays. This may be known theoretically but when the rubber hits the road, too often leaders slip back to old ways when they held the power because there was always someone willing to take a vacant job.

There is a further discussion when an old school leader is trying to coerce his subordinates to complete a task. The subordinates respond to coercive power saying “that won’t work on us millennials”, but then respond favorably to reward power.

Whilst this response and its implications is slightly jarring at one level, it is the world we live in now. 

The recent Australian Institute of Company Directors’ Director sentiment index is just one of many studies that acknowledges the difficulties of the current skills shortage. This is a complex issue that needs creative, long term solutions, not the least because there isn’t an endless bucket of money to just keep increasing salaries, and, millennials are the new workforce. Remember it is the previous generations that devalued loyalty as a favorable trait when we opted for a casualised workforce. We have to think creatively about how to best incentivize staff without just increasing salaries. Herzberg’s Motivation - Hygiene Theory addressed this decades ago, encouraging us to be more creative in ensuring job satisfaction for staff. My article on volunteering also picks up this concept.

The bottom line is, assumed power is no longer as effective as it once was. You may think you have legitimate, reward or coercive power, but that bargaining chip you once thought you had may no longer be as effective. It certainly won’t give you respectability or trustworthiness.

The new boss in Billions had to earn the trust of his employees - he didn’t have as much power as he thought.