Connect to Your Sources of Power

by Mark S. Fulton

My first taste of absolute power came with my first job. I was a fresh-out-of-college 12th-grade English teacher facing my first day of school when it happened. At the start of class a female student raised her hand and asked for a hall pass to visit the bathroom. Imagine the sense of authority and control I felt as I enabled my student to satisfy one of life’s basic needs. As I wrote out my first hall pass and handed it to her, I nodded benevolently and she smiled appreciatively. It’s too bad that exercising power isn’t always so simple.

Power is a wonderful and dangerous thing. It can be a positive factor that helps you achieve your goals and enables others to achieve theirs. It also can be a negative factor that defeats your purposes and de-energizes the people who depend on you for leadership. The proper use of power is vital to the success of organizations and the people who run them.

For much of human history, power was a function of force. Just as size, strength and ferocity determine which animals are the hunters and which are the hunted, so the fortunes of individuals and empires were determined by brute force. Of course, the balance of power between nations today is still largely maintained through military and economic might. However, human interpersonal power in civilized societies encompasses more subtle qualities, as well.

Character, influence, authority, ability, status and other factors determine the power you wield in personal and business relationships. Your skill at exercising your power at work affects the contribution you make to meeting your organization’s objectives and your own goals. Consider how you can use these five sources of power to enhance your personal and professional effectiveness:

Personal Power - Think of this as the power of your character and personality. Your integrity serves as the foundation for your reputation as an authentic, trustworthy individual. Protecting and enhancing your integrity is a constant challenge in a world where unscrupulous behavior is everywhere. Having a positive mental attitude builds on that foundation with characteristics such as cheerfulness, enthusiasm and optimism. “Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Positive Thinking” by Michael Ritts offers insights into developing such an attitude. Strong communication skills combined with sensitivity toward others’ needs enhance the potency of your personal power. Books such as Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence” and Richard Huseman’s “Give to Get Leadership” are good resources for building personal power.

Relationship Power - Who you know matters in life and in business. Doors of opportunity often are opened from the inside by someone with whom you have built a strong relationship. Networking is a powerful tool for creating a system of associates with whom you can form coalitions to get things done. Friends, neighbors, mentors, colleagues, supervisors, subordinates—everyone you know has the potential to play a role in your success. Purposefully seek to build relationships that are both personally fulfilling and professionally valuable by creating strategic alliances based on common interests or goals.

Position Power - If you possess authority over others because of your position in your organization, you have the capacity to exercise position power. But capacity is not the same as capability. Intimidation, exploitation and manipulation may be effective, short term methods for accomplishing your goals, but they ultimately motivate people to do less than their best and look elsewhere for employment. Wielding position power with grace and excellence requires a high degree of skill with personal and relationship power. Become a student of human behavior and learn how to encourage people who report to you to give you their discretionary effort.

Knowledge Power - Who do you depend on for know-how? That person has knowledge power. A perfect example is you organization’s computer network administrator. Special expertise invests individuals with the power of exclusivity; there are limited sources for the information they possess. Additional training and advanced degrees confer knowledge power by virtue of academic attainment. However, you don’t have to be a computer geek or possess an MBA to have knowledge power. Your knowledge power grows with each new experience, as long as you are determined to learn from it.

Task Power - Power that comes from the job you perform, rather that your position on your company’s organizational chart, is task power. Your function in the flow of work dictates the level of control you have over your organization’s processes. For example, an aviation maintenance technician may not have any position power, but he or she can ground a multi-million dollar aircraft in order to fix a problem. You can facilitate or impede the work of coworkers by applying task power. Think about how you can use your task power to make others successful and they are likely to return the favor.

Cultivating these sources of power and employing them for the good of your company increases your value as a member of the organization. They will help you and the people you manage accomplish goals in a collaborative and congenial environment.

Copyright 2002 © Mark S. Fulton