About POWER AND INFLUENCE

in #psychology5 years ago

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Power is the capacity to potential to influence others.

Influence is the change in someone’s attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors as the result of influence tactics.

Influence tactics refer to one person’s actual behaviors designed to change another person’s attitudes, beliefs, values, or behaviors.

There are five sources of power by which an individual can potentially influence others: expert power, referent power, legitimate power and coercive power.

  • Expert power - the power of knowledge. Some people can influence others through their relative expertise in particular areas.
  • Referent power - the potential influence one has due to the strength of the relationship between the leader and the followers.
  • Legitimate power - depends on the person’s organizational role.
  • Reward power - the potential to influence others due to one’s control over desired resources.
  • Coercive power - the ability to control others through the fear of punishment or the loss of valued outcomes.

Leaders Motives

People vary in their motivation to influence others. This is called the need for power.

Two different ways of expressing the need for power have been identified: personalized power and socialized power.

  • Individuals who have a high need for personalized power are relatively selfish, impulsive, uninhibited, and lacking in self-control. They exercise power for their own needs, not for the good of the group or the organization.
  • Socialized power implies a more emotionally mature expression of the motive. Socialized power is exercised in the service of higher goals to others and often involves self-sacrifice.

Mangers Motives

Individuals vary in their motivation to manage, just as in their need for power.

  • They strive to maintain good relationships with authority figures.
  • They want to compete for recognition and advancement.
  • They are active and assertive.
  • They want to exercise influence over subordinates.
  • They are visible different from followers.
  • They are willing to do routine administrative tasks.

Types of Influence Tactics


There are nine types of influence tactics: rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, consultation, ingratiation, personal appeals, exchange, coalition tactics, pressure tactics and legitimizing tactics.

  • Rational persuasion occurs when an agent uses logical arguments or factual evidence to influence others.
  • Agents make inspirational appeals when they make a request or proposal designed to arouse enthusiasm or emotions in targets.
  • Consultation occurs when agents ask targets to participate in planning an activity.
  • Ingratiation occurs when an agent attempts to get you in a good mood before making a request.
  • Agents use personal appeals when they ask another to do a favor out of friendship.
  • If two politicians agree to vote for each other’s pet legislation despite minor misgivings about each other’s bills, that is exchange.
  • Coalition tactics differ from consultation in that they are used when agents seek the aid or support of others to influence the target.
  • Threats or persistent reminders used to influence targets are known as pressure tactics.
  • Legitimizing tactics occur when agents make requests based on their position or authority.

CONCLUSION


Power, influence and influence tactics play a very important role in the leadership process. By reflecting on the five sources of power, leaders may better understand how they can affect followers and even expand their power.

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Nice job of pointing out how to work with differences in people. I have found that you need to tailor your approach to what type of personality you are working with. It makes managing and even customer service so much easier when you can adjust to what works for each person.

I agree with you. The problem is that you have to figure out the other people’s personalities. It’s not very easy. 😉

People come in all shapes and sizes, their minds and tactics are similar. Being aware of strategies mentioned in your content are always good to know, store to memory, be on the lookout for the negative ones. Great read thanks @starjewel

I agree @joanstewart. I happen to like the above classification of the types of tactics people might use, regardless of their shapes and sizes, like you perfectly pointed out. :)

Interesting how different persuasion tactics are used by different people. When you go in to a car showroom, it's obvious the kind of tactics they use in there vs those who manage at a company to get employees to do something vs those who lead a movement.

Thanks for sharing :)

Absolutely, that is why I wanted to point out the types of influence tactics. Thank you for your comment!

It's insightful to study the different techniques used to influence people. It's good to look inward also and learn what you yourself do. A good leader is always assessing his influence and improving his methods.

Yes, a good leader works non-stop on his skills 😉

Interesting to see the different personalities and styles encapsulated in a matrix like this. Although I often found myself in management-type roles, I was never much of a manager... I'm more of a "lead by example" type; people can follow if they want... or not.

I learned a lot about myself in the the process, though.

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