No Power Problem

Many people, especially young people just starting a new job, feel like they have no power in their new role in the organization.  On your first day on the job, everyone in the organization has more experience than you. Some people equate this with more power, so on the first day of the job they feel powerless, but in reality they are not at all.  Everyone has a certain level of power innately, but there are ways to increase your power right from the beginning of a new job, and it starts before you are ever hired.

Power comes in many forms and is something that people have defined specifically for the business world, but this really applies in all walks of life.  Every person has some degree of power in each of the five main areas of power.  A good place to start before reading this piece would be to spend a few moments reading a post I have written on two of the five types of power, which can be found here.  For ease of understanding, I will list and define each of these types of power below.

1)  Positional Power – This is also often referred to as legitimate power.  This power stems from your position or your job title.  This is often considered the weakest of powers, but for a young manager, this can be the only thing that gives them the confidence to make the tough decisions or have the tough conversations.

2)  Coercive Power – This is the power to punish others in the organization.  For a leader this is not the first power to leverage, but holding the power to punish someone gives you influence over that person as a manager.  This often leads to subordinates fearing the manager and doing what they are told for fear of being punished.

3)  Reward Power – This is similar to coercive power but in an opposite way.  The subordinates do what they are told because you have the power to increase their pay or give them bonuses.  This could also include vacation time or non-financial incentives.  This power has a limit, because there is only so much you can reward a person, but to a lesser extent encouragement and noticing people’s efforts fits here.

The three powers listed above are commonly classified as organizational powers because they are given to a person by the organization.  These three powers have more meaning to a manager, but a coach and a leader will spend his or her time developing the next two powers more.

4)  Expert Power – This power stems from your ability to do your job better than others.  This is derived from experiences and accomplishments, and also includes a power that some people separate out.  This is informational power, where people come to you because they seek information that you possess.  Hard work fits into this category as well.

5)  Referent Power – This power comes from people liking and admiring you.  This takes into account charisma and the respect people in the organization have for you.  The more well liked you are in an organization, the more power and influence you have with subordinates, coworkers, and upper levels of management. 

These two powers are generally referred to as personal powers, because these are the things that you have the greatest control over.  For a young worker or manager, these are often the only things you have in terms of power. 

Now back to you and your feeling of not having any power, as you read that list of five powers there must have been something that stood out to you as, “That describes me, at least to some extent.”  That is because, as I was saying earlier, everyone has a certain amount of power even if they do not know it.  The truth is that most people have been in this position before at the start of their careers.  Unless your family owns the company or you founded the company, very few people start in a position with organizational powers.  This means that people get positions of organizational power by increasing and leveraging their personal power.  A person who is not well liked and who has little expert power usually will not last long in an organization, so this brings me to a few ways you can solve this no power problem.

The first thing you can do takes place before you are hired.  In an interview, you make the first impression on the entire organization when you are interviewed by the person that will be your manager.  Having a good conversation with this person and developing a simple rapport is a great start for a working relationship, and a good first impression on the manager usually helps when they introduce you to their team.  To assure this, always smile genuinely in an interview and make a great first impression.

Developing personal power is about relationships with coworkers and managers, and the best way to do that is to be open for conversations by being generally happy and wearing a smile.  This does not mean you cannot ever have a bad day, but nobody wants to take time out of their day to talk with you if you are always grumpy or angry.  Even if you are not always mad, if your facial expressions and overall body language relays that, then people will treat you as such.  The key here is spend time getting to know people beyond their job description and develop a relationship with them.

A third tip is to listen when people are talking.  You might be thinking, “Well that is easy enough, I hear people talk all day,” but my definition of listening is a little different than that of most people.  Many people listen just enough to form a response or keep a conversation going and then walk away wondering what they just talked about.  My definition of listening is hearing what the person is saying and reading between the lines and pulling out the key details that highlight their motivations and how they think about certain topics.  By listening, you can give different people individualized attention when communicating with them, and by recalling details of a previous conversation, you can show them how much you care about your interactions with them.

By leveraging your personal power, you can quickly become the person in your team that is looked at for a promotion to a leadership role.  By increasing your personal power, eventually you will receive organizational power.  For now, focus on the power that you can control and see how much power you can get in your organization.  Always remember you are a powerful person.  

Power is part of the leadership equation, for influence which is another part I have written an article on that here.

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