The New Influencing Toolkit

Capabilities for Communicating with Influence

T. Baker

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137470164
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Verwaltung

Without influence, managers are ineffective. In today's workplace, managers need to influence up, down and increasingly, sideways as organizations become less hierarchical. This bookis expertly designed to diagnose and develop managerial influence, focusing on four key strategies: investigating, calculating, motivating and collaborating.

Part I

Understanding and Developing Power

chapter 1

The Power of Position

The ability to exercise power and influence fittingly is the lifeblood of management.

As positions go, there doesn’t seem to be a more powerful position on the planet than president of the United States. In this position the holder of the office is chief executive officer of the world’s only superpower. The US president is in charge of millions of employees – some 2 per cent of the US labor force. The occupier of office is commander-in-chief of the strongest army on earth. Wherever he travels, he is escorted by the tightest security detail. At all times he is accompanied by the so-called “football” – a briefcase containing America’s nuclear launch codes. The president negotiates treaties, pardons criminals and can appoint approximately 4000 senior officials with the consent of the Senate. These officials include ambassadors, judges, generals and cabinet ministers. It is hard to imagine a more powerful post in the world today.

What is the relationship between power and influence? Can you have one and not the other? What about personal and positional power: which is more important? I want to explore the association between power and influence in this first chapter of The New Influencing Toolkit. Specifically, I want to cover what influence really means for a leader and what it doesn’t mean. Then I want to consider the various ways managers exercise power in organizations.

Power is derived either from a set of personal characteristics or hierarchical position, or both. We’ll consider both sources of power. How can a manager increase their power? All managers have three spheres of influence they need to exercise in organizations. They need to be able to influence their boss on a pretty regular basis. Managers also need to exercise influence over their colleagues in other departments from time-to-time. And finally, the majority of a manager’s time is taken up influencing their employees. The ability to exercise power and influence fittingly is the lifeblood of management.

To understand what exercising appropriate managerial influence means, it might be useful to start with what it shouldn’t mean. It is not uncommon to consider influence or power as a form of manipulation. Some may think that by influencing people, we are exploiting them; getting them to do something by being deceptive or cunning, underhanded or tricky. As an extension of this idea, people of influence are oftentimes considered immoral or corrupt. This idea is not what The New Influencing Toolkit is about. I want to make that clear from the outset.

Influence is defined in many ways. And the concept of influence has changed throughout the ages.

AT THE COAL FACE. . . THE EVOLUTION OF INFLUENCE

The word “influence” comes from the Medieval Latin word influential, stemming from the Latin word influere, which means “to flow”. In the late fourteenth century, an astrological connection continued with the word being defined as “streaming ethereal power from the stars acting upon character or destiny of men”. Later, in the fifteenth century, the word had evolved into a closer version of today’s definition: “exercise of personal power by human beings”. In the 1580s, the meaning became “exertion of unseen influence by persons”. As a point of reference, the term “under the influence”, as it relates to being intoxicated, first appeared in 1866!

Today, The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines influence as the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways. The Oxford English Dictionary has a similar definition, stating that influence is the capacity to have an effect on the character, development or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.

John C. Maxwell, an author, speaker and internationally recognized leadership expert, is quoted as saying “leadership is influence”. Once we expand that quote, we can clearly see how important it is for managers to have the skills and expertise to be effective in eliciting the best from their employees and co-workers.¹

My definition of influence is: the power to make other people agree with your opinions or get them do what you want, willingly and ethically.² It is not about being cunning, manipulative or underhanded. It is undeniable that people who are cunning, manipulative and underhanded do get their way from time-to-time. But people resent this form of influence; it is dishonest and dishonorable. Therefore this deceitful and unethical behavior is usually unsustainable. This is not the type of influence or abuse of power The New Influencing Toolkit is based upon.

The key words in my definition are: power; willingly; and ethically. In order to influence anyone about anything, some form of power needs to be exercised. In the context of the workplace, this source of power comes from one of two sources, or a combination of both. Power can be derived from organizational position or personal qualities. We’ll explore these two dimensions in Part I.

Like the word “influence”, “power” can be, and often is, interpreted negatively. Power makes the world go round. We all exercise it in some way or form. Sometimes we are conscious of the power we wield and sometimes we are not. It is a normal, natural part of life. You can use power morally or immorally; it’s our choice. The New Influencing Toolkit is about applying power morally or ethically.

The other aspects of my definition are important too. To get someone to do something you want willingly rather than unwillingly is an important distinction. Being manipulative, on the other hand, means getting your way without the other party necessarily being fully aware of all the factors, or distorting the circumstances in some way that is misleading. Manipulation, in other words, means being cunning, tricky or unhanded in some way. A person being influenced according to my definition is prepared to change their thinking or behavior freely and consciously without any devious exploitation.

And finally, to be “ethical” means being fair, decent and just. To influence ethically is using honest and transparent ways and means to change a person’s thoughts, feelings or actions. I do not, in any way, subscribe to applying dishonest and unprincipled tactics to get your way with other people.

To influence ethically is using honest and transparent ways and means to change a person’s thoughts, feelings or actions.

Throughout The New Influencing Toolkit I trust you will clearly recognize these themes of willingness and ethics. The strategies and approaches in this book are based on taking people freely and readily in a different direction, without any deception or dishonesty.

Returning to the concept of power, let’s consider the various ways that people, particularly managers, exercise power.

Three positional power-bases are potentially available to managers through their hierarchical status in an organization. I will refer to these as legitimate, coercive and reward power-bases. As well as positional power, a manager can also exercise power by using personal attributes.

The structure of organizations defines some positions as more powerful than others. For example, the CEO has more organizational status than a supervisor. Putting aside organizational status for the moment, some individuals have the capacity to influence others with personal power, such as character traits or personality. This personal power can come from the connections people have, their competence and expertise, their access to important information, or their ability to be respected and liked. Although we will look at positional and personal power separately in the pages ahead, they can, and often do, readily impact each other.

In this chapter I’ll cover legitimate, coercive and reward power as characteristics of positional status. Each of these forms of power is normally associated with a manager’s organizational rank.

Legitimate power

If you have a certain position or title, you have designated power because of your organizational status. For instance, if you are a head of department, then people working in your department will regularly defer to your judgment by virtue of the position you hold. This is what is referred to as legitimate power. However, legitimate power doesn’t carry the same weight as it once did; people generally are not as easily impressed by title or position as they once were. Consider traditional positions of authority in our society. Positions of power such as police officer and teacher, for example, cannot rely on their legitimacy to the same extent they once did.

For instance, members of the public are less inclined to routinely do what a police officer instructs them to do purely on the basis of their law enforcement status. An increasing minority of school students will not necessarily simply bow to a teacher’s authority in the classroom. Society still recognizes the legitimacy of these occupations, but a better educated public are more prone to question authority than they once were. People working in vocations that once relied mostly on authority or status now need to use other sources of power to compensate for the breakdown of legitimate power.

Despite legitimacy being challenged more so these days, organizations are still to some extent hierarchical. Organizational members generally accept the power that is attached to managerial position. For instance, employees concede that an organizational leader has the right to give instructions and to see them followed within the strict limits defined by their organizational role. Positional power, however, is no longer based solely on the idea of “do as I say because I am the boss”. An overt use of positional power is not well accepted by an increasingly large number of people.

Power residing in a hierarchical position does nonetheless induce a degree of compliance from subordinates. Generally speaking, employees hold the view that the manager has a right, because of their organizational status, to expect their directives to be accommodated. But employees are less tolerant of managers abusing their positional power. There is an expectation that managers should use their authority appropriately and not dictatorially.

Coercive power

Coercive power is essentially power based on fear. On the surface, it may appear that the execution of coercive power is less than it once was in the modern organization. But if you scratch the surface, fear is still very prevalent in the twenty-first century organization. It is still commonplace in most workplaces. Physical coercion is rarely used by managers today. There are laws in place to prevent a beating, or a threat of a beating, in the workplace. However, some managers will consciously or subconsciously dominate groups by t...