Power and Leadership This week, the author provided various kinds of powers in leadership as a tactics in order to influence their followers. The positions of power include legitimate, reward, coercive, expert and referent power. Having a legitimate power means the leaders are aware of their current position as their manager or supervisor and therefore their employees must follow their leadership. Leaders use reward power to control their followers by providing incentives or rewards such as promotion, pay increase, time off and more. Coercive power is the opposite of reward power. With coercive power, leaders uses punishment instead of rewards in order to motivate their followers. For example, leaders that use coercive powers may punish an employee by termination due to lack of work performance. Expert power is from the leaders ability to provide their knowledge and skills to the organization. Followers are motivated and influenced by these types of leaders due to their superior of knowledge, their high level or work performance that they bring to the organization. The last power leader use to influence their followers is referent power. Leaders with referent power influence their followers due to their trust and respect to their followers. Leaders with referent power ensure the safety and the equal treatment they practice to their followers. The outcome of leaders that uses their referent power is the admiration from followers. (Daft, 2015) As a manger for a retail
Although, this is a great concept, it requires a great amount of effort on the leaders’ part. Unfortunately, some leaders do not feel the need to do this which may show in their lack of communication towards their workers. Showing self-control allows you to give attention wherever it may be needed. This could mean showing some form of appreciation and even encouragement to the employees when necessary. Being able to show some form of gratitude returns a mutual gain of trust. Being employed in a leadership role it’s necessary to apply some of these common strategies to use in a work place. When a worker feels more appreciated it begins to show within the company. After mastering the power of influence you’re able to gain a sense of authority. Authority is simply being able to get people to do what you want by your personal influence. On the other hand, you have power. This is usually accompanied by coercion, through the ability of applying force because of your position. The most common mistake to make is not knowing the difference between authority and power. Truly gaining authority is essentially carrying the power. Within Johns retreat, he is constantly learning the importance of humbleness as an effective
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.
Leadership is the most discussed topic when it comes to business. There has been much research into leadership and it the effect it has on the followers. Leadership research has included various attributes that show the difference between leaders and non-leaders and the effect it has on the followers. Leadership is a process using socially acceptable behavior, including personality traits used to inspire individuals to reach a goal or objective. There have been many studies that shown individual characteristics including skills and abilities can predict leader effectiveness. This paper is designed to discuss the persuasive forms of leadership and how the persuasion can facilitate change.
The text book also talks about that we need to recognize the important of interactions among leaders, followers, and the situation, in order to better understand the process of leadership. Indeed, interviewee underlines the importance of situation as well as the relationship between leaders and followers, in leadership, and said that leaders need to observe and analysis the situation as well as understand followers’ attitudes and
In leadership, leaders get his power from his group members. He proceeds in this position at the pleasure of members in his group collectively. The position of leadership exists in most settings regardless of group size. For instance, a leader of national or universal standing has vast influence over an expansive number of individuals while the influence of small group in a company is extremely constrained. Both are leaders in their own right and satisfy our definition of
The book, Followership How followers are creating change and changing leaders, by Barbara Kellerman, publisher Harvard Business Press details an interpretation of followers with his or hers correlation to their managers. Kellerman portrays through her book from the leader-centric approach, which govern work on supervision and leadership. However, the book describes examples how a leader typically have power, authority, and influence over a stakeholder in settings of public, private and non-profit organizations sectors (Kellerman, 2008).
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
In today’s competitive world, leadership skills are crucial for both personal and professional development. Leadership is an important function of management which helps an individual or a business to maximize efficiency and to achieve goals. Leadership has different meanings to various authors.Most commonly, leadership is defined as influence, that is, the art of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals. (Koontz). Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of either formal or informal group in the task of goal setting and goal achievement. A leader is one whose magnetic personality innervates people for some cause. Not by words, but by their actions is
The contents and assignment in this course has helped me understand the various theories of leadership and how different leadership styles can have a negative or positive effect on followers and organizations. The leadership theories helped me understand the concept of leadership better because it educates me on the different leadership options that are available. Leadership and followership is not based on specific characteristics. Leaders must draw from things and approaches to find the right style. A follower’s attitude determines the way a leader leads. According to Johnson (2011) “Being a good follower means ensuring your boss is supported, but only if he is making optimum decisions”.
It is important for managers to understand the sources of power and influence as they must rely upon the cooperation of subordinates in order to be successful. Strong managers rely upon more than just authority they also use leadership skills and power to obtain the most productivity from their staff. According to French and Raven (1959) there are five sources of power. Referent power seems to be the most influential and the least affected by change. To quote Paul Argenti,
Over the years, a great deal of time, and research has been dedicate to the study of leadership. Even with extensive data on the topic, many still disagree on what leadership really means. Hence, leadership is a word that has many different meanings and different researched theories associated with it. On a basic level, leadership involves having and establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with followers, respecting followers, and leading an organization with excellence while ensuring that everyone is part of the team. Leadership is also a method by which a leader uses his or her influence towards getting a group of followers to take ownership or buy into a vision.
A leader is defined as a person with responsibility to influence one or more followers and directing them to achieve a set objective (Sethuraman, 2014). In order to achieve that set of objectives effortlessly, effectively, and efficiently, the most important and valued trait of a leader is an effective leadership styles. Effective leadership styles are required in every organization at every level to be successful. The success or failure of an organization depends on the quality of leadership particularly on the part of top management. An effective leadership style can be developed on the basis of understanding of the situations (Sethuraman, 2014). Top management should know which leadership style is needed based on the situation to be most effective to gain trust and respect from their employee. There is no single method of influencing the behavior of employees for every situation. The employee’s level of knowledge on the task and can determine which leadership style that will be most effective for the situation. Preparing leaders to lead
The concept of power is an applicable leadership concept. Leaders use power to decipher whether they have the ability to acquire the commitment or obedience from their workers/officers. Leaders that are educated or trained under the old-paradigm, have low levels of expectations of others around them, and tend to use
Within each organization there should be effective leaders who should be able to maintain an organization’s vision and mission. These leaders are part of the management that can effectively lead a growing organization to succeed. There are various tools such as character traits, influence, persuasion, and change which can help an effective leader manage. A manger/leader should be prepared to persuade and influence others by using their character traits. Theories of leadership, management, and influence and change will be a major topic in this paper. This paper will discuss each of the elements of leadership and management, and how influence, persuasion, and change can affect the outcome.
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.