Leadership & Power

Grojean, Resick & Diskson (2004) suggest that leaders are responsible for facilitating their follower’s to become capable and guide them to improving their capabilities and strengths. Differentiating between different leadership styles can be done in a number of ways. It was determined that the traditional styles of leaders include authoritian (autocratic), democratic, permissive (laissez-faire) and bureaucratic (Viinamäki, 2009).

Leaders are some of the most influential individuals in any society. They have the ability to influence those around them with various leadership styles including coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching. Effective leaders consistently adapt to the environment around them to either enhance or correct any situation facing them. Within these leadership styles the most effective style has been considered that of the authoritative style. This style brings individuals together, builds self-confidence, and easily adapts to the environment around it.

In this intriguing Wharton Leadership Digest interview, authors James Quigley and Mehrdad Baghai talk about eight archetypes of leadership from their new book, As One: Individual Action, Collective Power (Portfolio, 2011): • The landlord and tenants – Tenants voluntarily decide to join landlords, but once they do, the boss has the top-down power, controlling access to scarce resources, doling out rewards and sanctions, and dictating the terms of tenants’ participation. • The community organizer and volunteers – The power for setting direction comes from the bottom up, but the community organizer is the glue that holds things together. Volunteers can’t be ordered around; instead, they join on their own terms if

This writer decided to read the first three chapters of the book Leaders Without Titles by Steve Sampson. The first chapter was called “Intellectual Dimension” which was mainly an introduction to the book as a whole and introduced some of the main topics to be discussed throughout the rest of the book. What was interesting about this chapter and caused this writer to pause and seriously rethink the idea of leadership was the statement retold by Sampson (2011) which was originally spoken to him by one of his mentors (Kindle Location 224). The mentor stated that “to influence without authority was the key to leadership” (Sampson, 2011, Kindle Location 224).

All leaders share a common trait. The ability to influence other people to do what you want is essential

This is why, Organizational renowned scholars have been studying of this very significant topic of leadership for literally hundreds of years. Because. It is very complex, not simple one.

In the world we live in today the roles of power and leadership are often confused. Although they have similar meanings, they can be distinctly defined between the latter. The key difference between the two is the term of effect. Power is the exercise of leadership, and leadership is only defined if you have power. Leadership always involves attempts on a leader to affect behavior or a follower in a situation, whereas power is not equivalent with influence on another person’s behavior. Although power and leadership have similar meanings, they are certain differences that can point out what makes

Leadership is a process of influencing activities of a particular group of people with the aim of attaining certain stipulated goals. In defining leadership there is need to consider a particular group, the common goals and the duties that are allocated to specific members of the group depending on their abilities (Fiedler 1976). Leadership therefore cannot successfully occur unless members of the group are given different considerations in terms of personality, traits and responsibilities. In considering leadership, it is important to look at the leader, the group or organization they are leading, the members as individuals and the situation; these are

There has been vast amounts of research done on the topic of leadership, and yet despite this it continues to be ‘‘riddled with paradoxes, inconsistencies, and contradictions’’

representative would be representing their state and would be given 2 year terms. The House of

There have been many studies on the subject of leadership and many different arguments or studies on the different styles of leadership. There are those that believe that leadership is something that one is born with and not something that is taught. Most professionals become familiar with their respective leadership style as well as the leadership style of others over a period of time. Research suggests leadership is a balanced combination of task and people concerns and orientation. Some say there is no one style of leadership suitable to all possible situations. Therefore, what is desired is the ability of a leader to choose the style of behavior that best fits the situation at hand (Kostovski, Bojadjiev, & Buldioska, 2015). This case study discusses the leadership behavior of two leaders, Ben Samuels and Phil Jones. (Yuki, 2012) categorizes Ben and Phil as demonstrating a task behavior or a relation’s behavior style of leadership.

Leadership is something that can be taught (Northouse, 2015. There are some valuable theories, which will be discussed later in this paper, how a leader can develop into having a strong influence in any daily aspect of their lives. Also later in this paper it will be discussed the various styles of leaders that can affect the behaviors of the actions of each leader. Each leader can learn these attributes or some of them just have the natural capability of being a leader.

Power is a source of ability to control other’s actions (Combe, 2014). French and Raven had originally developed the most influential theories in purpose of determining the sources of power that leaders use to influence others. The five sources of power consist of coercive, reward and legitimate where categorized in positional or organizational power; expert and referent are the sources of power which categorized in personal power (French & Raven, 2004). Generally saying, the personal power is more regarded to the job satisfaction of the employees, the commitment of the organization, and job performance (Lunenburg, 2012). In contrast, the coercive power is a power depending on fear which brings negatively consequences (Combe, 2014). Even though, these sources of power have been defined their own definition, these powers should not be completely separate from each other. Carlos Slim is a model leader who applies those powers together

Leadership has been a topic that has been researched for a long time in many disciplines. Leadership as a personality focuses on the characteristics of an individual that gives them power to act as leaders. There is leadership as an attribution this approach views leadership as phenomenon that causes group of followers to have outcomes.(Wu et al, 2010, 90).Researchers have used the following approaches to study leadership; they are mainly trait, behavior, power influence, situation and integrative approaches. Trait approaches focuses on the characteristics, values, skill and personality of leaders. Behavior approaches is focused on the leaders behaviors, differentiating between the behavior of ineffective and effective leaders. Integrative approach combines all the approaches to have a holistic picture of the process, outcomes and determinants of leadership. The approach that this paper uses is situational approach that is not leader centered but more on the significance of the context as an influence of leadership. Leaders should be able to choose the leadership quality appropriate to a particular situation.

This paper focuses that how we can improve ourselves in becoming an effective leader we want to become or need to be. Leaders who can influence the individual behaviors to make them absorb change and how to integrate this change with the exercise of power. Distribution of power and how employees perceive about power imposition on themselves and their positions in the organization. Trying to develop an action plan which a leader can effectively influence the individuals and drive them to work for a desired outcome satisfactorily. Additionally, trying to find answers on how leaders can use the authority in a positive manner and how they can use power to get the benefits out of the change with power imposing on their subordinates?