Leading Through The Skillful Use of Power

In the formalized relationships of business where the manager has the authority to direct and evaluate the activities of others, make decisions and resolve disputes, power isn’t evenly distributed.  This means that the power differentials in manager-employee relationships don’t necessarily reflect actual differences in ability.  For instance, managers may supervise people who carry out activities they couldn’t do themselves or do as well, such as write advertising copy or engineer new products.

That means it’s incumbent on managers to use power wisely and well.  Two “power traps” undermine leadership effectiveness.  At their extremes, they look like this:

• Affiliative managers are so anxious to be liked they’re afraid to exert their rightful authority.  They avoid conflict, fail to provide corrective feedback for unsatisfactory performance, and create inefficiencies by being indirect or promising too many things to too many people.  They sacrifice results for relationships.

• Dominant managers are so intent on exerting their own power that they’ll do anything to meet their goals or look good, acting as if people and goodwill were expendable.  They sacrifice relationships for results—including taking all the credit for the results! 

Most managers fall somewhere in-between, but outstanding managers balance a need for positive relationships with a need to produce results by taking their use of power to another level entirely:

• They see their job as empowering and inspiring others rather than managing by command and directive.  They develop others so that they can manage themselves, including inspiring people to suggest new ways to improve performance.

• Instead of the manager determining what level of performance is acceptable, employees are personally invested in doing their best and raising the bar.

• Even if the manager is formally responsible for the outcomes, everyone in the group feels empowered to affect the results and takes personal responsibility for, and pride in, working to high standards.

• Decision-making and conflict resolution are shared and pushed down as far as possible, so that the leader is only involved at very high levels when decisions and differences need to be resolved.

Excellent managers provide the vision and direction for the work, but view their job as facilitating execution by developing their people and providing them the resources they need to excel themselves.