Business
This week we will continue working on the explanation of our 5 traits or types of power that we started discussing last week. As a reminder, they were Reward, Coercive, Legitimate, expert, and referent.Coercive and Legitimate Coercive power gets us right back into the swing of things this week. It feeds off of reward power in a way and it can be defined as the abuse of rewards systemsOr more so the abuse of the punishment aspect of rewardCoercive power is based upon fear and threat of punishment Also, it is the complacency of leadership and failure to reward for quality work It is when leaders see this quality but do not recognize it as if it is just the expectationThis can be very demoralizing for a team Have your team working effectively since they are in fear of punishment for not doing what is told is not a happy or productive workspace.There is a time and place for everything and under certain circumstances, this can be very effective In the event of a problem employee, they need to understand that they are placing themselves in jeopardy of being removed from their positionPrefer not to use power to threaten This can be very hard on your personal work-life and even your home life It can be very demotivating for all involvedFellow team members will witness the interactions between the employee or team and leadership and it can cause them to not want to be placed in that position themselves Both mentally and morally you and your team will do better for this mindsetAlso, the negatives of a workspace managed and lead by fear will only be tolerated by the team for so long before they push back The abuse of power can cause a quality worker to become standard. They will feel their hard work is unvalued and why to make the effort.Legitimate PowerNow we come to our next trait or type that we will discuss Legitimate power is positional power Their power is based upon their position and may not have been gained through relationships but tier understanding of the roles and processes of the jobThis means that the person in power may be very good at the job but horrible at leading peopleMany companies and businesses make this mistake they place individuals in the roles of supervisors and managers based upon their job performance but then neglect to train them in leadership skills and values This does not mean that they cannot become amazing leaders.Companies that take the time to train new leaders and supervisors will lessen that growth time and give the new manager a solid basis to grow upon.There is a massive difference in being very good at your job and being able to lead others to be good at theirs as wellLegitimate power is based upon a platform of the role versus the personRememberTo the people that listen to this podcast or read it in the blog you are on the right trackI may not be the foremost expert on all that I write about but in listening to this or reading you are beginning to grow yourself and self-growth in leadership is invaluable Continue to grow and learn in all that you do and you will be a better leader for itListen to podcasts read books to study and become stronger In doing this you will become an expert in both the job and its process but also the leadership aspect of it as well This personal growth of leadership knowledge will assist you in the future as you will potentially already be in a role fo expert power. We will expand on this topic again next week when we cover the next two aspects expert and referent power.See you next week.