For decades, the word “power” has had a negative connotation and often been used in conjunction with “corruption.” Yet, the reality is quite different. If power isn’t acquired for personal gain, anyone can use it to challenge the status quo, drive change, and make a positive impact.
While power can be intimidating because of possible misuse, you can’t lead change without it. For this reason, individuals at any stage of their careers can establish power within their organizations, as long as they’re willing to understand its sources, which can be:
- Personal: Personality traits, skills, and expertise
- Positional: Titles, ranks, and formal authority within an organization
- Relational: Contact networks
Do you want to be a driving force in your organization but are unsure of where to start? Here are four strategies you can use to gain power and influence.
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1. Understand Your Organization’s Political Landscape
Organizational politics consist of the steps professionals take to improve personal or organizational initiatives. Understanding an organization’s political terrain is essential to any leader hoping to leverage power to affect change.
According to the Harvard Business Review, “studies show that individuals with political skills tend to do better in gaining more personal power, as well as managing stress and job demands, than their politically naive counterparts. They also have a greater impact on organizational outcomes.”
Properly diagnosing your organization’s political landscape starts with clearly mapping its power dynamics. This is often done through power mapping.
Once the map is complete, it should illustrate several organizational factors that are useful to a position of power, including:
- A comprehensive list of people’s roles within the organization
- The organization’s readiness for change
- What roles carry the most decision-making power for certain changes
- The sources of power you can collaborate or draw from
- Whose support is needed for sustainable change
These insights are powerful tools for leaders and change-makers hoping to push initiatives forward.
2. Build Strong Networks
All leaders must understand that power comes from those around them. Organizational networking is the fabric created from personal contacts that provides essential support, feedback, insight, and resources.
Building strong, strategic networks enables you to work through multiple barriers to change because it reveals untapped potential within your company. In many cases, those who fail at driving change do so either independently or within their department or team. Strategic networking allows you to consider available resources in your organization’s other areas and their helpfulness in aiding change.
Through a network assessment, you can analyze patterns or gaps in your professional network to get a clear understanding of your established relationships’ effectiveness. While creating new professional connections should always be a priority, network retention is crucial to gaining influence within your organization.
3. Develop Influence Skills
Power and influence can’t be obtained without trust. This is true in all aspects of business—even a company’s brand.
In 2015, Facebook shocked the world when it didn’t protect the privacy of 87 million users whose data was harvested without consent. This led to public backlash and a major decline in trust—a hit that Facebook hasn’t fully recovered from.
According to Forbes, “business leaders must establish trust with customers, employees, and investors by being ‘the real deal.’” But this isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Your personal influence style is determined by several factors. Here are a few steps you can take when developing it:
- Learn how to earn people's trust.
- Identify what influence styles and behaviors you use the most.
- Determine what styles work best for certain people and situations to best leverage your influence.
- Understand how stereotypes can negatively affect trust.
4. Hold Power Accountable
You may be familiar with the expression, “practice what you preach.” This couldn’t be more true when it comes to organizational power and influence. Managing power ethically and responsibly enables you to hold other influential people accountable.
This can be done by taking action against a corrupt leader, democratizing power within your organization, or protecting others from abuses of misused power. Whatever strategy is used, effective leaders need humility and empathy for those not in positions of power.
Accountability is perhaps the most important skill in effectively leveraging power, but those with the most influence often overlook it. For power to positively impact others, an organization’s structure needs safeguards and limits to facilitate accountability. Like all change, this takes time.
Can You Use Power to Lead Change?
Anyone can use power to drive change. Often, the disconnect for aspiring leaders isn’t in their intentions but in their tactics. A common downfall is misunderstanding how power really works.
“People confuse power with authority, but authority is no guarantee of power, and you don’t need to be high in the hierarchy,” says HBS Professor Julie Battilana, who teaches the online course Power and Influence for Positive Impact, in an article for Working Knowledge. “To identify who has power in an organization and who doesn’t, you shouldn’t rely on the organizational chart. Instead, answer two questions: What do people value in that setting, and who controls access to what they value?”
If you can answer those two questions, you’re well on your way to gaining the power to lead change at any scale.
Want to learn more about power and influence? Explore our online course Power and Influence for Positive Impact to discover how you can develop the skills to implement meaningful change and challenge the status quo.
