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Where Power Comes From: Personal and Positional Sources
Principles of Management · Chapter 9: Leadership Styles and Sources of InfluenceSection 9.10 · lesson 54 of 11712 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
Personal power travels with you; positional power stays with the role.
- Describe the 5 bases of power
- Distinguish personal from positional sources
- Explain the follower response each produces
- Assess a leader's power base and its sustainability
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,705 words). Read along, or search it.
Leadership Styles and Sources of Influence
Where Power Comes From: Personal and Positional Sources
Every leadership style in this chapter has rested on something underneath it. Power. This closing section asks where that power actually comes from. We'll separate power from two words it's often confused with, authority and influence. Then we'll lay out the five bases of power, and sort them into two groups. Positional, and personal. We'll see what each base produces in the people who follow, which is either compliance or commitment. We'll look at the real costs of coercion, and at the single principle underneath all five bases. And we'll meet a manager whose influence vanished the day she changed jobs. By the end, you should be able to assess a leader's power base, and judge how long it will last.
Related Terms
Power, Authority and Influence
Start with three terms that are easy to blur. Power is the capacity to influence the behavior of others. Authority is narrower. It's power specifically conferred by a position. Influence is power actually being exercised, in the moment, rather than merely held in reserve. Those distinctions have real consequences. A leader can hold considerable power without currently exercising any influence at all. And, as we'll see later in this section, a person with no formal authority whatsoever can still hold real power. And she can exercise it, too. So when we ask who has power in an organization, the organization chart is only a partial answer.
The Bases of Power
5 Bases of Power
There are five distinct bases of power. Legitimate power derives from formal position. It's the organizationally conferred right to direct, the same authority covered in Subchapters two point two and nine point one. Reward power derives from control of valued outcomes, things the leader can grant, or withhold. Coercive power derives from the capacity to impose costs on someone who doesn't comply. Expert power derives from knowledge and competence that others recognize, and rely on. And referent power derives from identification and respect. It rests on a follower's own desire to maintain a valued relationship with the person who holds it. Notice that the first three are about what you control. The last two are about who you are.
Grouping the Bases
Positional and Personal Power
Those five bases sort into two groups, and the grouping has a direct practical consequence. Legitimate, reward, and coercive power are positional. They derive from the organization, and from the role a person occupies within it. Expert and referent power are personal. They derive from the person herself, not from any role she happens to hold. Here's the consequence. Positional power is lost with the role. A person who leaves the position that granted her legitimate, reward, and coercive power loses all three, the moment she leaves. Personal power travels with the person. Her expertise, and the respect that produces referent power, belong to her individually. They move wherever she does. So a useful question for any leader is this. If the title disappeared tomorrow, what would be left?
Follower Response
Compliance or Commitment
The finding that matters most in practice is what each base produces in the follower's actual response. It connects directly to Subchapter two point two's distinction between compliance and commitment. Legitimate and reward power generally produce compliance. The follower does what's asked because the position carries formal weight, or because a valued reward is attached. But that doesn't necessarily produce any deeper investment. Coercive power produces compliance too, but with resistance and resentment. The follower complies specifically to avoid an imposed cost, while carrying genuine ill will about being compelled. Expert and referent power produce something different. They produce commitment. The follower genuinely internalizes and invests in what's being asked. Not because compliance is required, but because she respects the source enough to want to follow it.
Table 9.10.1
The 5 Bases Side by Side
Table nine point ten point one brings all five bases together. For each one, it shows the source, the follower response, and whether the power survives a change of role. Legitimate power comes from formal position. It produces compliance, and it's lost with the role. Reward power comes from control of valued outcomes. It also produces compliance, and it's also lost with the role. Coercive power comes from the capacity to impose costs. It produces compliance, with resistance and resentment, and it too is lost with the role. Expert power comes from recognized knowledge and competence. It produces commitment. It does survive a change of role, traveling with the person, though it can erode. And referent power comes from identification, respect, and the desire to maintain the relationship. It produces commitment, and it travels with the person. Read down the last two columns together. The bases that produce commitment are exactly the ones that survive a move.
Coercive Power
It Works, and Then It Costs
Coercive power's costs deserve a full statement. First, be honest about why it's used. It works in the short term, genuinely producing immediate compliance. But it damages the relationship between leader and follower in the process. And it produces minimal compliance, rather than effort. A follower complying only to avoid a cost has no reason to offer more. She gives the minimum the threat requires. It also invites concealment of problems. A follower who fears the cost of reporting bad news has a direct incentive to hide it instead. The cumulative consequence is significant. Sustained use of coercive power degrades the information a manager actually receives. Think about who sees a developing problem first. It's the people closest to the work, and coercion has taught them to conceal it. So the leader who relies on threats ends up managing with the worst information in the building.
Figure 9.10.1
Dependence Beneath Every Base
Underneath all five bases sits a single foundational principle. A has power over B, to the extent that B depends on A for something scarce, and not substitutable. Figure nine point ten point one shows three situations at a fictional firm, Harborline Manufacturing. In the first, A controls the only budget B needs. The source there is legitimate and reward power. In the second, A holds expertise no one else has. The source is expert power. In the third, A is the only path to a valued introduction. The source is referent power. Each situation traces back to the same principle. B depends on A for something that's both scarce and not substitutable. This explains where power actually sits in an organization, whatever the chart says. Someone with no formal position, who controls access to something scarce and irreplaceable, holds real power. In that sense, dependence is more fundamental than any one base. Each base is just a mechanism for creating it.
Personal Power
Maintained, and Usable in Any Direction
Personal power travels with you, but it isn't permanent, and that's especially true of expert power. Expert power erodes in a changing field, as knowledge that was once current becomes outdated. It needs active maintenance. That means continued learning, and engagement with the field's actual current state. Otherwise it's only assumed to be current, by people who once relied on it. Personal power also matters for a second reason. It works where authority doesn't. That connects to Chester Barnard's work, from Subchapter three point eight. Barnard argued that authority ultimately rests on the subordinate's own acceptance, not the superior's formal position alone. Now picture someone influencing across, to a peer, or upward, to a superior. In that direction, she has no legitimate, reward, or coercive power at all. That leaves expert and referent power. Recognized competence, and a relationship others value enough to maintain. Those are exactly the two bases that don't depend on formal authority over the person being influenced.
Ethics and Synthesis
Leadership or Manipulation
One more boundary matters, the ethical use of power. It returns to the line Subchapter nine point one drew between leadership and manipulation. Influence that genuinely serves the interests of the person being influenced sits on the leadership side. Influence that serves the influencer at the other party's expense crosses into manipulation. That's especially true when it depends on concealment to work. And it holds regardless of which power base is doing the influencing. Subchapter ten point four develops this further, including the personality construct most associated with manipulative use of power. This section also closes Chapter nine, so step back for a moment. The chapter defined leadership and its real, but bounded, effect on outcomes. It moved through eight named styles, each with genuine fit and genuine limits, and integrated them with the grid's two dimensions. And it ends here, with the five sources of power every one of those styles draws on.
Case Vignette
Influence That Did Not Survive the Move
Here's a composite case, constructed for instruction. Beatriz spent several years as a department head at Harborline Manufacturing. Her word carried substantial weight. Staff readily followed her direction, and budget requests she approved were rarely questioned. Her presence in a meeting reliably shaped its outcome. Then she moved into a newly created advisory role, with no direct authority over any team. It was explicitly designed to let her focus on strategic guidance across the organization. She found her influence had all but disappeared. Staff who once followed her without question now treated her input as one voice among several. It was easily set aside whenever it conflicted with what their own managers preferred. Her influence had rested almost entirely on legitimate and reward power. Both are positional, and both vanished when she left. She'd never needed to build expert or referent power, because her formal authority made it unnecessary. The advisory role exposed how little personal power she'd actually built beneath the title.
Check Yourself
Name the Power Base
Let's practice naming the power base behind an influence attempt. A manager grants a bonus for meeting a target. That's reward power. An employee complies with a directive because of the manager's formal rank. That's legitimate power. A supervisor threatens a formal write-up for continued lateness. That's coercive. A colleague's technical advice is followed because of her recognized expertise. That's expert power. And a team member goes along with a request because she deeply respects the person asking. That's referent power. Now a reverse problem. A manager is known for closely monitoring performance, and issuing swift consequences for shortfalls. After a serious quality failure, she discovers her team noticed the problem weeks earlier, and never reported it. Which power base explains that silence? Think back to what coercion teaches people to do with bad news. Next, Chapter ten turns to the formal contingency and process theories of leadership. That includes the situational leadership model this chapter named, and handed forward.
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