Competency 7001.01.02: Leadership Through Influence: Influencing the Transformation of Healthcare

Competency 7001.01.02: Leadership Through Influence: Influencing the Transformation of Healthcare

Leadership Influence and Power

            Leadership refers to the state of social influence in which a person solicits the support of another person in order to achieve a common goal or task. It involves facilitating people with ideas and coordinating them to get a particular task done. Power brings in the aspect of dominance in leadership, it is the ability of a leader to manipulate people to do what he wants, when he wants and in the manner he also desires. Influence on the other hand, refers to exercising authority through persuasion and mobilizing people to follow in order to achieve control (Kotter, 1985). This paper seeks to find out whether these two elements of leadership can co-exist for a successful achievement of control and if one can exercise influence with the use of power only.

From the above definitions, it appears that a leader who begins by seeking to obtain power jeopardizes his ultimate objective. The reason is that if ‘power’ is used, it will have an adverse impact on the people being led as they are more likely to develop fear, which will lead to communication breakdown. People are naturally social beings and they prefer to be treated with the respect they deserve. This is also among one of the most important ethics that facilitate cohesion in any organization.

Although power is good, a true leader will not focus on it as his main tool of achieving goals. In fact, he will first focus his efforts on selling his ideas for the people to buy and work them out as if they were their own. This will help promote unity and respect to authority, which will in the long-run result to power. Use of direct power to intimidate people in an organization does not necessarily result to the ultimate success because the people will only remain on course when they do not have an alternative. In actual sense, the leader will never know the actual number of people he is leading, which may be perilous to the long-term plans of the organization.

Leadership influence is actually the main ingredient for a successful leader. A charismatic leader is charming with an intrinsic and influential sophisticated interpersonal persuasion and communication abilities. Through influence leadership, one is able to mobilize people and get them doing an extraordinary task. Power of influence comes with teamwork and loyalty, which is necessary for the attainment of the organizational goal and objectives. Power derived from influence is more real and resilient as it comes as a result of mutual respect and trust.

Power and influence can co-exist only when the power came after influence. This kind of power will not be intimidating as the followers will automatically be subservient to the authority. It will also complement the leadership process as followers will gain confidence in their leader, giving him or her advantage in delegating duties and responsibilities. Conversely, if the power came first, the organization will lack cohesion, trust and the necessary teamwork giving the authoritative leader a hard time in steering the organization. It is also socially impossible for people to be manhandled and at the same time be expected to deliver in their responsibilities. They may become grumpy and uninterested with the objective of the leader making it more expensive to perform as they are bound to make mistakes.

In conclusion, power and influence with respect to leadership may either be complementary or detrimental to each other, depending on how the leader derives and uses it. Inmost cases if correctly matched, it may accelerate the achievement of the organization goal without straining the followers. On the other hand, if mismatched, it may facilitate the fall of not only the leader but also the entire organization. A person is a leader only when he/she has followers otherwise, he will be on a nature walk (Dilenschneider, 1990). Choose to lead by example and you will achieve both influence and power hence enjoying leadership experience.

References:

Dilenschneider, R. L. (1990). Power and influence: Mastering the art of persuasion. New York, NY: Prentice Hall Press.

Kotter, J. P. (1985). Power and influence. New York, NY: Free Press.