Jarlath Duffy - Change from Within

Understanding power in all its guises in an organisational context is crucial for all leaders and managers. Power is the potential or actual ability to influence others in a desired direction. Power, when viewed as potential or actual influence, is an essential part of effective leadership and management. It can come from the control of information, knowledge or resources that are desired by others. Historically, the idea of power was associated with evil that emanated from coercion. Whereas currently, power is recognised as having both positive facets that can highly influence performances in organisation and negative facets that can create conflict through associated power behaviour. Individuals and groups, formal and informal, in an organisation can exert power. Individuals can exert influence in a variety of ways e.g. managers exerting influence over subordinates, leaders using charisma to motivate team members.

Attempts to exert influence can be constructive or destructive. For example, calling and facilitating a meeting to address dissatisfaction in the team is constructive. Whereas encouraging people to ignore policies and procedures can be destructive and all managers should have guidelines for the ethical use of power in their organisations.

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