Desert Storm, ©Joseph Scott Gladstone, 2020
Leadership studies can be seen in two ways: there are those who study leadership, such as me. And there are those who want to learn how they can become good leaders. When I think of what it means to be a good leader, I think of being an effective leader. And an effective leader is somebody who can influence somebody else to perform work. And in this case, work means to get somebody to do something. Classical leadership theory uses the word motivate, which means basically the same thing. As a word, motivate, evolved from the Latin movere, which literally means “to move.” And that’s what effective leaders do. They motivate others to move. Whether that movement is some kind of job related work or task, or voting against their own economic interests.
The Most Important Thing a Leader Needs
When asked what is the most important thing a leader needs to be a leader, the answer is simply one word:
Followers.
How a person attracts and keeps followers is a completely different thing. Which is why there are folks like me who study leadership, and why many others want to learn how to be effective leaders.
Power and Influence: Having Something Others Need or Want
There are many theories about what makes leaders effective. If I had to pick one, I lean heavily toward power and influence. Effective leaders know their power sources and how to use these sources to influence people to move. It doesn’t matter whether a leader’s intent for movement is good or bad for followers.
Power is about a potential leader having something that a potential follower needs or wants. Again, determining follower needs and wants is an entire academic discipline, but since most readers simply want to know how to acquire power and use their power to influence people to follow them, I will keep this article as short as possible.
You simply need to follow my lead and read on.
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Did you notice that you are still reading?
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Why are you reading this article?
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Very likely you are reading this article because you want to learn how to be an effective leader.
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And you are willing to read more despite this rather unusual writing style for a lecture.
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This is because I have something you want or need.
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Information about leadership.
Power and Influence: Sources I
Every potential leader has some source of power and influence over potential followers. Power and influence can be seen as sticks and carrots. Power is your stick. It comes from authority to give or take away the things that your followers need or want. Influence is your carrot. It is a “softer” way to satisfy your followers needs and wants. However, neither is completely independent. How you apply power and influence determines whether you are using a stick or carrot to get your followers to move. To do work.
Before I go further, I need to pound the following rules into your head:
1. It is important to always keep in mind that you as a leader are a leader because you have something that your follower(s) needs or wants from you.
2. It is important that while you have the thing that your follower(s) need or want, you might not be the only person with that thing. Note that the thing can be a physical tangible item, or the authority to grant something intangible.
3. It is important to remember that you can be replaced. One of your power sources can be less powerful as a different leader’s power source. Remember, you have followers because you have something they need or want. If another person can fulfill their needs and wants, that person makes it easier for your followers to fulfill their needs or wants through her or him, then they will follow the route of least resistance.
4. Keep your promises. Never promise to satisfy your followers desires and then fail to honor your promise. You will never fully regain faith from your followers.
Power and Influence: Sources II
These are your sources (bases) of power and influence (French and Raven, 1962, in Leadership [8th Edition], by Peter G. Northouse. SAGE Publications, 2019):
A. Legitimate
B. Reward
C. Coercive
D. Information
E. Expert
F. Referent
These six power bases can be organized into two major groups: the first four in the above list are forms of position power, and the last two are personal power. As inferred in the names, your position power comes from your position in an organization. Legitimate power is the authority vested in you to lead a team, program, department, division, entire enterprise. It’s also the authority the state confers upon physicians to practice medicine on you, and for lawyers to represent or charge you in court, and the power judges have to send you to prison or set you free.
In the university world, legitimate power is the power professors hold over their student. This power dynamic is easy to understand from a student’s perspective.
Remember that power comes from having something a student needs or wants. In school settings, most students want at least a passing grade for the class they are in. The person with the legal authority to assign a passing grade is the class’s professor. The professor is conferred this authority from the university. The state gives the university its authority to authorize professors to assign grades to students who want at least passing grades and high marks to students wanting high GPAs for either choice careers or for graduate study admissions. Because professors have something students want, professors can influence their students to move their bodies from their cozy dorm rooms to classrooms across campus. They can influence their students to read specific books and articles and do work related to those readings. They can influence their students to sit quietly and answer a series of questions evaluating what they learned in the class. And they get this power to influence these student behaviors from the legitimate authority granted to them by the university, who in turn gets its power from the state to authorize professors such power.
So, rhetorically asking: where does the state get its power to authorize universities to authorize professors to assign grades to students? Another aside, not all power comes from the state.
Reward power can be a form of legitimate power. A supervisor can be given the authority by a company to give workers cash bonuses for productivity. Sometimes reward power doesn’t have to be conferred legitimately. My son helped me create my COVID Lectures web pages. He received a cash reward for his effort. My authority for giving him this reward wasn’t conferred to me by the state, it’s simply power I had available to me. Of course it helped that I had the cash to give to him for his work. In short, my son wanted money. I have money he wants and it was easy for him to get cash from me if he did some reasonably effortless work to build my COVID Lecture web pages.
Coercive power is a bit tricky to explain. But in short it’s the opposite of a reward. When a person has the ability to punish another person –follower– for failing to perform a desired behavior, or for performing an undesired behavior, that ability to punish is coercive power. For example, some professors enforce class attendance rules by creating and enforcing policies that remove points from students who arrive late for lectures. Students economic systems operate by points. The more points a student earns in a class, the greater likelihood that student will earn a high grade. The less points a student earns, the less likely there will be a good grade. Punishing a student by taking away points is coercive power. Yet, and again, this is tricky. Threatening to withhold points is also coercive power. The key is keeping a student from accumulating much wanted points in a class.
Information power is having information that a follower wants or needs. You as a health administration leadership student are acquiring information power that you can use in your workplace. Through your series of courses, you are acquiring information that potential employers want so that they can achieve their business objectives. Employers are willing to pay you in exchange for the information you have. However, on the flip side, your boss or another coworker might have information you need to do your job. Perhaps knowledge about company-specific processes to complete tasks. Information you need. Since the other person has the information you lack, they can influence you to do things they want you to do.
As a refresher, legitimate, reward, coercive, and information power are all forms of position power. They are power that comes from formal positions and ranks in organizations. The last two, expert and referent power are forms of personal power, or when followers see their leaders as knowledgable and likable.
Expert power is different than information power. Information power is power acquired by possessing knowledge about something such as an administrative or simple technical process in an organization. I know how to process travel claims. I have information power. Expert power, on the other hand comes from the follower’s perception about your knowledge and competence.
It is important to distinguish the difference between information and expert power. Information is knowing something. I know the sources of power and influence. I can answer quiz questions about power and influence sources. I have that kind of information. How much you, my follower, actually see me as a competent expert in knowing about power and influence, makes you comfortable enough to give me expert power.
Information power comes from my position in the university. I have information about power and influence. How well you believe I am an expert in knowing about power and influence inspires you to give me power to teach you about power and influence. If you think I am incompetent, you are less likely to follow me.
The same goes with referent power. An employer can authorize a person to boss around other people, but only the people –the followers– can confer whether or not they like their legitimate boss. If they like their boss, they will be more willing to do work for that boss. If they don’t like their boss, then they are less eager to do work regardless of the boss’s authority to reward, punish or control information.
When Power Can Be Abused
Recall that being a good leader means being an effective leader. This is important because effective leaders can be good or bad, morally speaking. Hitler was an effective leader.
Ways To Lose Power and Influence
Lose your legitimacy. Have your power stripped by the conferring authority.
Lose your ability to give reward and instill punishment. Can be lost by having such authority pulled from conferring authority, or by follower no longer having value in the reward or punishment. When class ends, you will no longer need points from me. I will no longer have the power to influence you to read my online class lectures. My son will some day find out he can make a lot more money doing web design for somebody who can afford to pay him more than I can pay, so I will lose the power to influence him to create my web pages.
Lose your ability to give information. Either your information has become outdated by new and better information, or your follower simply no longer needs to know what you know.
Lose your credibility with your followers. Your followers start seeing you as incompetent or you have done something that makes them dislike you. More important, they lose trust in you and find another person who they see as more competent and trusting than they see you.
Current Leadership During Covid Crisis
Unfortunately, the U.S. government is being led by somebody very incompetent for the job of leading the country. This past week gave another example of incompetence when this leader suggested that we should explore disinfectant injections and, how to best say this, I’ll just say intra-body light treatments to treat coronavirus infections. Yet, despite this glaring incompetence, this leader has very loyal followers willing to overlook his incompetence because he fulfills needs they find more valuable than combatting a pandemic, specifically racial superiority.
Yes, I am quite aware that while I am talking about the current U.S. president, my example lead to a different leader, and as you read through those links, you will see very frightening similarities between he and a past leader with near-identical characteristics who gained control of a nation through similar means, and who drove his nation into ruin. Including its physical division for decades. Unfortunately for us, our president is delegating a great deal of responsibility to an equally unqualified, incompetent manager.
Competent leaders rise during crises. However, incompetent leaders eventually lose faith from followers and others who look up the nations they govern. So followers will seek people they see as better leaders, locally, internationally, and professionally. As of this writing, it’s unknown how pandemic and economic leadership dynamics will evolve, so I can only leave you with insight to guide how you view current leaders and how you will act when (if?!) the time comes to replace or keep them.
Power
Legitimate power empowers people to act at grand scales by granting them broad authority to legally act on their whims. The legitimate power of the U.S. presidency gives a very weak, narcissist the power to determine the fate of a nation and the people within it. Given the level of power that the U.S. has globally, this authority extends globally. Although, as with all power relationships, such power expires when others no longer seek something from the one with power.
Lessons From the Crisis
This article evolved to the U.S. role in global leadership, and clearly points out the threat that current presidential leadership has for U.S. democracy and freedom. I’m aware I did this. I suspect that you as a leadership student really wants to know what you can learn from this.
The lesson you can learn from this mess is knowing and appreciating your sources of power. Where you get them from. How you can lose that power. Despite having positional power, it is far better to have and use personal power. If you are cool with your employees and co-workers, they will be far more willing to move and do work for you than if you relied solely on your position’s authority to dole out rewards and punishments.
Finally, it is possible to inadvertently reward the wrong behavior. But that is for a future lesson in a different class.
