Please pick any 8 questions with 80 words each.

Leadership Power

1.  How does power impact the power holders and those who are subject to it?

2.  Provide examples for each personal source of power.

3.  Why are some forms of power more influential than others?

4.  Provide scenarios for the appropriate use of each source of power.

5.  Provide examples of the use of different influence tactics.

6.  Provide examples of how teams can use the sources of power available to them.

7.  How are the team sources of power different from those available to individuals?

8.  What are the factors that contribute to abuse, corruption, and destructive leadership?

9.  What can be done to prevent or eliminate abuse of power and corruption?

10.  What are the key roles of a leader in implementing empowerment?

11.  Could empowerment lead to powerless leaders?

12.  Why, or why not?

 

This chapter focuses on the link between power and leadership. A leader’s power to influence others is the key to achieving goals and to being effective. In this influence process, a leader accesses a number of personal and organizational sources of power. Power changes people. The effect on those who hold power ranges from becoming more generous to abusing their power to exploit others. Those who are subject to it can commit to what is being asked of them or resist passively or actively. In either case, equal distribution of power tends to have positive effects in organizations. The more leaders rely on power sources vested in themselves, such as expertise or a relationship, the more likely it is that subordinates will commit to the leader’s decisions and actions. Reliance on organizational sources of power, such as legitimacy, reward, or punishment, at best leads to temporary employee commitment and at worst to resentment and resistance. Given the increasing use of teams in many organizations, it is also important for teams and their leaders to develop sources of power by coping with uncertainty, becoming central to their organization’s mission and goals, and providing unique products or services that make them indispensable to others in their organization.

Although power is necessary to accomplish organizational goals, power also leads to abuse and corruption and is one of the factors in destructive leadership. Excessive power can cause leaders to develop inflated views of themselves due to compliance of the followers, flattery and compliments, the separation of leaders from their subordinates, and their access to too many resources without much accountability. In addition to the ethical consequences, such excessive power can impair the leader’s ability to make good decision making, increase their reliance on authoritarian leadership, engender adversarial interactions, and ultimately, cause subordinates to resist their leader’s requests. Careful selection of leaders and implementation of an organizational culture based on integrity and openness are key to preventing abuse and corruption.

The face of power is changing in many organizations. The key aspect of this change is the sharing of power to allow subordinates to participate in decision making, thereby leading to higher-quality decisions and subordinates’ sense of accomplishment. The success of empowerment depends on the leader and the organization creating a positive atmosphere in which structures are decentralized and employees are encouraged to experiment and innovate; employees also must be well trained and supported. In addition, high-performance standards need to be set, with rewards tied clearly and fairly to performance. Despite the bad press the abuse of power received recently, the proper application of power in organizations is essential to a leader’s effectiveness. Power is at the core of leadership.

 

 

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