- Power is given, but maintaining it requires superlative communication skills
- Healthy relationships are at the core of prosocial power and this requires an awareness of how we communicate with others
- Expert and referent power are the most enduring because they’re the most respected and prosocial
Think about power and the power of your words, actions, ability to influence and motivate people to do what you want them to do. It conjures all kinds of images, both positive and negative, but both sides of this coin are rooted in an important truth: power is given, not taken.
Leaders are granted power by those around them and they must find ways to maintain it. This also means power can be taken away and we see that happening all the time. For example, celebrities who mouth off offensively and lose everything or politicians caught revealing their true intentions they muttered under their breath on a hot mike. Even people in our daily lives lose power when they blurt out something they meant to keep to themselves. As these examples demonstrate, power can take significant time to gain, but can also be lost in an instant.
What I’ve always found interesting as a social scientist who studies communication and leadership is how easy it is for the most powerful people among us to forget this. A taste of power can be too delicious for some people. As they gain more power they start to crave it, they lose all sight of logic, reason, who they are and what they’re actually doing to people around them, as well as to themselves. Power for its own sake is destructive, which is why I often focus on the communication that represents the power sources my clients most often use.
When a taste for power takes hold, some people want to see how far they can push it, often to truly disastrous results. They don’t like it when their influence doesn’t work or is questioned, so that makes them push even harder, because power fuels their ego and some egos only survive on power. This is where it goes off the rails, on micro and macro levels. Leaders addicted to power start to see threats to their sense of self, which begins to consume them. When this happens, these powerful people invariably forget how power is formed. It is given and it is social. Without an audience, or others to have power over, there’s nothing there. Power requires a willingness to be influenced.
When these two ideas – power as given and social – take a backburner, that’s when this power becomes tainted. And that’s usually when it’s lost.
The most effective way to gain and maintain power is through building healthy relationships, which is the definition of social. Though it may sound like we mastered this in the sandbox as toddlers, clearly, we didn’t. Businesses, communities, families and any kind of group usually have a few people who prefer to take an anti-social approach, making life difficult for everyone else.
In the academic study of power, we talk about social and anti-social sources of power. There are five primary sources: reward, coercive, legitimate, expert and referent. What we know is that humans tend to use these power sources to exert their influence, but there are some that are more influential than others.
Reward, coercive, and legitimate power sources are what we call anti-social forms of power because they aren’t anchored in relationships governed by respect or mutual affinity.
So, what does this mean? Legitimate power is the power that comes with a title or position – CEO, manager, director, president, you get the idea. But we all know there are plenty of people with titles who either lean too hard on their title or are just figureheads with not much influence. Reward power is the ability to give someone something or reward them (a raise, promotion, prize, etc.) because we want them to do something for us.
Coercive power is the opposite, taking something away or punishing them. These kinds of black and white, good or bad approaches are easy ways to exert influence, but just because people are following orders doesn’t mean they’re motivated to do so out of respect or a desire to get it right. They do it because they have to, not because they want to or are excited to. We’re built to avoid punishment and seek approval and reward and coercive power leverage our deepest human instincts. Think of communicating with a toddler. They respond so naturally to coercive and reward power because their little brains haven’t yet cracked the code of logic, which will enable them to understand the nuances of relationships and respect.
The other two power sources are expert and referent and for many reasons, these are the most important and the most coveted because they are lasting. These power sources are social and have the greatest ability to influence and impact people over time.
Expert power is exactly what it sounds like: you trust and respect a leader because they have real, deep knowledge and you see them as a true expert. They’re not faking it, you can see, feel and experience what they know and do. It offers an opportunity to do things better, learn more, have greater success and embrace the pride that comes with it. This is where influence enters the picture, because it creates opportunity for others and regardless of what we do or how we do it, we’re all in search of opportunities to do as well as we can, consciously or subconsciously.
Most of us respect others who know things and in turn, our respect grows if they share that knowledge. Throughout our history, this is what’s enabled us to survive and no matter how evolved we may think we are, deference is hard wired into us. We’re built to follow those with greater expertise than we have and expert power creates social opportunities for relationships to be built around that expertise.
Finally, this leads to referent power, which is simply put: respect power. Think of this as the power given to a leader because their followers, employees or community members respect them, like them, want to be around them and feel supported by them. This is the most prosocial form of power and the form we should all be striving for.
Research consistently shows that this is the most influential and motivating form of power. It pays the greatest dividends, spreads the benefits farthest and widest and creates teams that do the best work and achieve the most.
So, how does one create referent power? It’s simpler than it sounds and easier than learning a new language: it comes from getting to know your employees, community members and supporters and actually communicating with them, supporting them and learning from them. It’s as prosocial as we are capable of being. This means investing in the people around you, taking the time to listen and communicating with intention. This works deceptively simply: people are reciprocal and if you invest in them they give you respect, hard work, energy, and most importantly, power in return.
This isn’t rocket science, it’s just something we take terribly for granted and give virtually no thought to and it’s costing us personally and professionally. We’re not good at seeing the long term benefits of spending time building rapport and respect through communication. And frankly, we think we’re better at it than many of us actually are. It’s a discipline we need to practice every day.
It’s also worth pointing out that any of us are capable of possessing all these power sources, simultaneously. The diversity of relationships in our lives virtually guarantee this. We don’t communicate with our loud, obnoxious neighbor the way we do with our boss, employee, family or anyone else. This means we must choose the most appropriate power source for each circumstance. This requires us to adapt our communication. The problem arises when we are too dependent on one form of power and we use it indiscriminately on everyone and in every situation. This leads to trouble.
Sure, people in leadership roles have legitimate power that comes with rewarding and punishing abilities and sometimes those do have to be used in order to influence people. That’s part of being a leader and comes with the territory. But the goal is to not have to lean on those power sources all the time.
Superlative leaders, the ones hard-working people will follow anywhere, lean hard on referent power and ease up on coercive and reward power. When leaders start from a source of referent power, they develop more creative, innovative, loyal and productive teams. When paired with good teams, referent power creates growth, opportunity and passion. And of course, the opposite works too. But the anti-social forms of power have a finite amount of influence because no one follows the jerk any farther than they absolutely have to. Who among us signs up for insults, frustration, degradation and alienation? No one who has the choice to leave.
Essentially, this is all about developing any businesses’ greatest asset: your people. Referent power is an investment in your people’s development because they choose to be there. Finding another job is easy and people do it all the time, mostly because they don’t feel comfortable in the culture or the ways power is used. The businesses that abuse their power will continue to drive their most valuable assets away. Remember, you have power because your people gave it to you and they have chosen to stay, at least for now.