Mustering power in complex environments is the essence of Influential Leadership and the successful implementation of political campaigns (which were covered in the last article, Political Campaign Planning). Power needs to be a serious consideration at the strategic planning stage. A strategy, on its own, no matter how good it is, will fail unless it is backed with sufficient power to overcome the inevitable resistance and opposition.
Earlier in this series, you were encouraged to identify powerful stakeholders without considering what makes people powerful. This article will fill that gap and develop your ability to quantify what makes people powerful within your organisation.
Stating the obvious, in order to leverage more power, you have to do more with what you have got, you have to increase your power and/or you have to get powerful people to lend their power to your cause.
Here is a summary (taken from Influential Leadership) of what can make you and others, powerful:
- Credibility: The power derived from your professional standing and expertise.
- Character: The underlying traits, values and beliefs which shape your behaviour.
- Presence: The impact you create and the feelings you stimulate when people meet you.
- Position: The roles you play and how you manoeuvre yourself into the limelight. This includes control of resources and money.
- Connections: The network of relationships you have around you and your work.
- Skills: Those exceptional abilities you have which enable you to get things done.
- Agenda: The issues and priorities you focus your leadership attention on.
Now, looking at these sources of power:
- Which ones are the primary sources of your power?
- Which ones would be most helpful in achieving your purpose/goal?
- What power don’t you have that you need to have in order to make more progress on your campaign?
- What can you do personally to bridge any gaps?
- Who do you know who could help you to fill these gaps? Perhaps they can help you to develop these power sources. Alternatively they may be willing to give or lend you their power.
- How can you motivate these people to help you?
To answer the last question, consider their personal and professional agendas carefully. If you can identify links between what you are doing and what they are seeking to achieve, you may find it much easier to engage them.
As you are doing all of this, be alive to the risk of relying too heavily on someone else’s power. At all times, try to build your own power as a first preference, then get others on board who have a significant reciprocal reliance on your goodwill. This is not to say that you should have a hold over others necessarily, but the last thing you want is to find yourself in the position where you are vulnerable to others changing their mind and forcing you to do things that you wouldn’t want to do.
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