Spider-man's uncle once said, "Peter with great power comes great responsibility."
And in this video we're going to look at French and Raven's Power Bases, the forms
of power. And as we look at this I don't just want to make it academic. I want to
make it real world. So ask yourself as we talk about these, where do I see myself
in each of these forms of power in my professional role? So let's get into the details.
Hello again friends. Alex Lyon here and this channel, Communication
Coach, is here to help people like you, rising leaders, to help you increase your
own personal leadership impact to bring up the people around you. And today's
topic is power, French and Raven's original five power bases and then at
the end we're going to talk about this sixth power base that they added a
couple years later in the 1960s. This is really old research but I think you'll
be surprised at how applicable it is to your current position. So the first form
of power is legitimate power this is where you are hired, elected, or appointed
to a particular position that comes with responsibilities, legitimate
responsibilities. So let's say you're a frontline supervisor you're probably
going to at some point make people's schedule. That's your legitimate
responsibility. It's tied to your position. And clearly you don't want to
overuse this legitimate power and lord it over everybody. Like Peter Parker's [uncle] says
with power comes responsibility. The next form of power is reward power.
And this is pretty expansive. If you're ever in a spot where you can reward
somebody with money, with free time, with praise like a pat on the back, hey good
job. That's a reward that people like and that has an influence over them because
we want to work hard for rewards. I'm a a middle-aged man and I still like a pat
on the back if someone says a job well done that's a reward for me. The flip
side of this is the third form of power which is coercive power and this is
another one you don't necessarily want to over use. This is the power to punish
or potentially punish. So in other words if people know that you
hypothetically punish them then you still have coercive power so you don't
have to use this to have the form of power. So I teach college and everybody
knows that the teacher has the power over the grade and so in my position I
currently have coercive power although I don't mention that. I don't push that on
people but everybody knows that the boss can fire you that the teacher can give
you a bad grade if that's the great that you earn and so forth.
The next form of power is referent power and this is really the power of
likeability. If you have an influence over people because you have charisma
you have a good relationship with them they look up to you,
that's referent power. And whenever I talk about referent power in my classes
people mention people like Oprah Winfrey. She's not my boss she's probably not
your boss but she has a lot of influence over people. She recommends books and
then people read them they become bestsellers. She gives advice and people
take it she has a lot of referent power and this is one that is wonderful to
cultivate and use and you can't do too much of it because it's not like
legitimate power or coercive power. It's a kind of power where people want to follow
you. And the fifth of the original five power bases is expert power. If you have
a really high level of education let's say you're a physician or a lawyer or
professor or some kind of expert engineer then you have expertise. And a
lot of times people will look to you to bring in that expertise to influence a
decision, to figure out the way forward that's going to help and create the most
benefit. So that's an expert power that you bring to the table to influence
things. And I've seen entire groups get swayed by one expert because that expert
knew more than everybody else. so those are the original five and the sixth
power for more power base is a little controversial this is called
informational power. First of all, it's not tied to you as a person it's the
power of the information. So let's say you have information that you provide
to somebody, that might influence that decision or a future decision because
they've been swayed by it. they've been persuaded sometimes we're persuaded by
evidence by information. I say it's a little controversial because if you
think about it if you're in a professional setting and you have
information because you're in that organization, that information
doesn't really belong to you personally. And so you want to be very cautious not
to use that information as a commodity as a way to make yourself more powerful.
Information in organizations should be shared widely if it's the kind of
information that people would benefit from then it should be shared widely. You
shouldn't hold on to it and I've seen people do this they use it like it's
money to buy and sell and trade to enhance their own position of power. The
other way that this is a little different from the others is it's not
connected to you personally. So reward power legitimate power those are
connected to you and your position personally but informational power is
not. So, in other words, if you give someone information then they have that
information you don't have it anymore so now that information is shared it's
somewhere else. In fact, you might even give them information and they don't even know it
came from you. So in its nature, this one's a little different from the other
five and that's probably why they added it later. It is, however, very important to
put on the list. So like I said question of the day where do you see yourself in
this list? I would love to hear the kinds of power that you see tied to you in
your professional role and I'd love to hear that in that section below. So
thanks. God bless. And I will see you in the next video.