Management Leverage Blog

I got into a power struggle with my four-year-old this morning. He wanted to wear his new rhinoceros shirt to school, which would have been fine with me, if wasn’t so dirty that it now had a texture. I could have scraped crud off with my fingernails. I won the argument, but it wasn’t pretty. Just like at work, victories are often awarded to the more powerful.

Anyway, that got me thinking about the relationship between power and office politics. My idea at this point is to write about legitimate power today, personal power in the next post, and then provide a template of a Power Map as a tool,

If you buy into this notion of ethical office politics as a necessary skill set of the promotable employee, before entering the political arena it is a good idea to understand the power terrain of your organization. A good way to do this is to draw up a Power Map.

The organizational chart is the first place most would look to find the powerful and the powerless. One important source of power available to managers is tied to their position in the organization. This is known as position power. Several bases of power are available to those with position power.

1. Legitimate power: Power based on one’s hierarchical position in the organization.

2. Reward power: Power based on one’s ability to administer valued rewards.

3. Coercive power: Power based on one’s ability to administer punishment

But if your Power Map stopped here, you enter the political arena in a very dangerous position. There are surely very powerful people in your organization without the title on their business card.

These people have what is known as personal power. I will cover several types of personal power in the next post.

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