Power in leadership helps teams reach greater levels of performance. Having the ability to lead and motivate others is valuable for anyone in a managerial position to inspire their teams to reach big goals.
Powerful leaders are usually extremely persuasive. In general, power is often seen as connected to credibility and influence. When you're influencing people, you capture their minds and hearts and move them to action.
If you have this power, it's essential that you understand that [it] was given to you – and can be taken away. Don't abuse it.
-Nicole Lipkin, author, What Keeps Leaders Up At Night
But not everyone knows what to do with power once they have it.
"Power tends to get to people's heads," says Nicole Lipkin, author of What Keeps Leaders Up At Night. "We're not really trained to handle power well."
In 1959, psychologists John French and Bertram Raven developed a framework for understanding different types of power. In her book, Lipkin writes about these concepts and why it's important for leaders to understand what type they're using.
1. Legitimate Power
Legitimate power happens when someone is in a higher position, giving them control over others.
"If you have this power, it's essential that you understand that [it] was given to you – and can be taken away. Don't abuse it," Lipkin says.
2. Coercive Power
There's really no time or space for coercive power in the workplace, Lipkin notes. No matter how good of a leader you are, fear likely won't win respect and loyalty from your employees now or in the long run.
"Ultimately, you can't build credibility with coercive influence – [it can be] like bullying in the workplace," she says.
3. Expert Power
This power comes directly from your top-level skills and years of experience. Once you hold expert knowledge, your peers will likely regard you as such.
"If [someone] holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in statistical analysis, her colleagues and reports are more inclined to accede to her expertise," Lipkin says. "This gives [her] a great deal of influence."
The great thing about this type of power is that no one can take it away from you. It's the knowledge that you hold. However, to remain an expert, you need to continue learning and improving.
4. Informational Power
This is a short-term power that doesn't necessarily influence or build credibility.
For example, a project manager may have all the information for a specific project, giving them "informational power." But it's hard for a person to keep this power for long, as eventually this information will be released. This should not be a long-term strategy.
5. Power of Reward
This power is held by those who can motivate people to respond to win raises, promotions, and awards. For example, managers hold a certain amount of reward power if they administer performance reviews that determine raises and bonuses for their underlings.
"When you start talking financial livelihood, power takes on a whole new meaning," Lipkin says.
6. Connection Power
This power creates influence by proxy and often results from solid networking skills. You can attain this type of power by gaining favor and being a resource to people.
"If I have a connection with someone you want to get to, that's going to give me power. That's politics in a way," Lipkin says. "People employing this power build important coalitions with others."
7. Referent Power
No matter what type of leader you are, referent power is one of the most valuable kinds of power. It's all about how you build and develop relationships.
"This power depends on personal traits and values, such as honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness," Lipkin notes. "People with high referent power can highly influence anyone who admires and respects them."
The Takeaway
When people perceive you as powerful, they will more naturally rely on you. There's a lot you can achieve through that influence. Each of these types of power has advantages and disadvantages. As a leader, it's essential to understand the types of power in order to inspire and motivate others, while building trust and credibility with your team and beyond.
A version of this article was originally published on June 17, 2013.
Photo: Getty Images
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August, 2011 and was updated May, 2022.
It’s a cliché we’ve all heard before: with great power comes great responsibility.
But in times of disruption and uncertainty, those with power are faced with more responsibility than ever before. Especially when disruption is becoming more frequent than ever affecting supply chains and beyond, it can be difficult to navigate. Leaders are tasked with giving directions without the help of a roadmap, and the decisions they make not only effect the success of the business but also impact the safety and well-being of their employees.
Progressive leaders understand the weight of this responsibility, but also see it as an opportunity to innovate and grow.
Channeling Power into Progress
Driving cultural change and organizational transformation is now a priority for businesses that were heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve realized that for their company to survive – let alone thrive – they need to be agile in their operations and prepared for any future disruption. Adding this necessary agility is a process that starts from the top, but many leaders are finding that they aren’t sure where to start.
There’s no tried-and-true approach for how to respond to a pandemic, especially when its impact differs so greatly from company to company, industry to industry. As a result, many business leaders are going back to the basics in hopes of understanding their sphere of influence and how they can best utilize it to drive positive change in their company’s culture.
The hope is that by understanding power dynamics and how these dynamics affect others will uncover insights about what type of leadership a company currently has, and if that type of leadership is truly what the company needs.
The five bases of power, identified by John French and Bertram Raven in the early 1960s, The showed how different types of power affected one’s leadership ability and success in a leadership role. And when managing complex projects in industries like construction, understanding power in leadership is more important than ever.
The five types of power are divided in two categories:
Formal Power
1. Coercive
Coercive power is conveyed through fear of losing one’s job, being demoted, receiving a poor performance review, having prime projects taken away, etc. This power is obtained through threatening others. For example, the VP of Sales who threatens sales folks to meet their goals or get replaced.
This type of power can be used to set high expectations for employee performance. Leaders can use coercive power to establish innovation as part of their employee’s responsibilities – if people aren’t able to come up with new and inventive ways of doing things, then they might get replaced with someone who can provide that value.
2. Reward
Reward power is conveyed through rewarding individuals for compliance with one’s wishes. This may be done through giving bonuses, raises, a promotion, extra time off from work, etc. For example, the supervisor who provides employees comp time when they meet an objective she sets for a project.
This is all about positive reinforcement and can work to really incentivize people while on the job. The draw of a reward – whether big or small – can foster creativity, healthy competition, and excitement across your team. Even if it isn’t realistic to offer rewards all the time, the energy reward power can generate will encourage cultural change that sticks even after the fact.
3. Legitimate
Legitimate power comes from having a position of power in an organization, such as being the boss or a key member of a leadership team. This power comes when employees in the organization recognize the authority of the individual. For example, the CEO who determines the overall direction of the company and the resource needs of the company.
Driving cultural change with legitimate power means leading by example. If you want your employees to prioritize things like innovation, automation, or building out digital capabilities, demonstrate the importance by communicating the why — why it aligns to with business goals, why it is the right move for the company, and why employees have the power to make a difference – and back your words up with the resources and support teams need to succeed.
Personal Power
4. Expert
Expert power comes from one’s experiences, skills or knowledge. As we gain experience in particular areas, and become thought leaders in those areas, we begin to gather expert power that can be utilized to get others to help us meet our goals. For example, the Project Manager who is an expert at solving particularly challenging problems to ensure a project stays on track.
With expertise comes respect. People are more likely to trust your insights and follow your lead if they know that you have a wealth of knowledge in a relevant field. For leaders who model expert power, they can drive organization-wide cultural change by encouraging others to become experts, too. This could look like practicing knowledge-sharing throughout the company, so people can access a single-source of truth to inspire and inform their innovation efforts. This could also look like using your expertise to provide training opportunities for new and useful skills.
5. Referent
Referent power comes from being trusted and respected. We can gain referent power when others trust what we do and respect us for how we handle situations. For example, the Human Resource Associate who is known for ensuring employees are treated fairly and coming to the rescue of those who are not.
You can hope that your efforts to be a leader to your company — whether through a successful business quarter or a successful digital transformation — will result in referent power. If you have referent power, it means you have already made progress towards changing your organizational culture. And with each successful project, this reference will only grow, encouraging your employees to take bigger, smarter risks and keep moving forward.
Leading Teams Through Transformation
We live in the age of agility, meaning that businesses either must adapt or fall behind. You can change your processes, upgrade your tech, and increase your market visibility as much as your like, but if these changes aren’t backed up by the people at your company, your efforts will inevitably fall short.
It’s up to leaders to make sure that their organizations can keep up with these changes by driving cultural transformation alongside all other transformation efforts. This is best done by strong leadership who aren’t afraid of using their power for the good of the company and who care about empowering employees across the business to grow and innovate.
Being cognizant of how leadership’s power effects their employees is a great first step but needs to be followed with a commitment to change. And for this change to make the biggest impact, it needs to involve each and every employee in your company.