It is not a secret that effective management is essential for a successful operation of a group, organization, or company. While being able to implement appropriate influence and power tactics, administration can create a positive working environment that will contribute to employee satisfaction and productivity. Therefore, the following paper will discuss a personal experience of working with a manager who held a fair amount of power in the organization and used effective influence tactics while communicating with staff.
There are five main sources of power that individuals use when working in various settings, such as legitimate, coercive, reward, expert, and reference powers. While legitimate and expert powers are the types of influence that are given to professionals based on their positions or talents respectively, reward power is implemented by compensating people for their achievements (Bauer & Erdogan, 2012). At the same time, coercive power is used as a way to threaten and punish employees because of their failures, and referent power is the ability to impact others due to respect and admiration (Bauer & Erdogan, 2012). The leader that will be discussed in the essay used two types of power – legitimate and reward since they are very effective and associated with each other. By appropriately taking advantage of the role he had in the company, the manger praised, recognized, and respect staff for their work and achievements. Therefore, everyone in the organization were motivated to work and produce the best results.
Since the manger was a professional leader and was able to have a positive influence on employees, he also used effective influence tactics in his work. Once of the impactful activities that he engaged with was staff empowerment. As mentioned by Luthans et al. (2015), this technique can bring a beneficial change to a company by developing a shared goal and encouraging constant collaboration. The manger actively used this strategy by motivating employees, making them interested, and communicating a shared purpose. In case of a challenge or a misunderstanding, he used the coalition influence tactic in order to influence employees collectively. With the aim of making employees feel respected, he did not use his authority to assign people with tasks but rather engaged in a discussion while also receiving help from supporting team members (Luthans et al., 2015). Therefore, it can be seen that the manger used the tactics that were discussed in the assigned readings.
Based on the discussion in the paper, it can be concluded that the leader used the fair amount of power and made good use of specific influence tactics. His main goals included being respectful towards employees, making them feel appreciated and valuable, and motivating professionals to produce positive outcomes and follow the company values (Bauer & Erdogan, 2012). For this reason, working with this manger was one of the best experiences that I had in my professional career. By observing and taking an example from him, I understood what are the most effective strategies for working in a team.
Overall, effective management is a factor that determines the success of an organization. It is critical for the administration of any organization to understand and implement appropriate power and influence tactics in order to create a positive working environment and motivate the employees. Thus, the presented paper discussed the manger that I was able to work closely with in terms of his use of power and influence tactics.
References
Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2012). The power to influence. In Organizational Behavior (pp. 556-572). Flatworld Knowledge.
Luthans, F., Luthans, K. W., & Luthans, B. C. (2015). Power and Politics. In Organizational behavior: An evidence-based approach (pp. 280-287). Information Age Publishing.