Leaders are entrusted with the power to influence organisations by those they manage, says Francisco Javier Vázquez Junior . Delving into concepts, tools and methods of analysis, the Iteso University Business School MBA director explains what this means for those seeking to create cultures of cohesion and guide teams towards shared goals Power to the people
P ower in the context of will have a distinct set of characteristics and means of influencing people, as Anáhuac University’s Miguel Angel Castillo Alarcón has identified. ‘Coercive power’, for example, relies on fear in social relationships to influence people and stems from leaders’ ability to promote or dismiss them. ‘Expert power’, meanwhile, is when people are influenced by a leader’s knowledge of specific situations or organisations, their experience dealing with them and their achievements. When influence on others is instead conferred by an organisation’s structure and hierarchy, we call it ‘legitimate power’. If, on the other hand, influence derives from a leader’s charisma, which in turn becomes a model management and organisations offers an instructive window into our understanding of how to establish authority and lead with a human focus. Of course, there are different types of power and each of these
for behaviour and life among their followers, we refer to ‘referent power’. Lastly, ‘reward power’ describes influence conferred on a person who leads and has the authority to promote people based on their results. In 2022’s Comunicación + Liderazgo , Margarita Köhler Peláez suggested that “the leader’s power comes from the follower. When the leader provides followers with power that gives them wellbeing, security, trust and happiness, followers confer power on the leader in return.” The types of power that are most natural to leadership, therefore, can include all of the categories above, with the exception of coercive power. This is because leaders must not influence through fear. Those that do are only exercising their place and power in the hierarchy, as denoted by their role in the organisation as a manager or director, rather than their status as a leader. The crux of leadership Power implies “a desire to dominate wills,” as Miguel Ángel Aguirre Sánchez pointed out in Leading and Motivating Teams . However, the way in which those wills
30 | Ambition | JULY/AUGUST 2024
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online