[Coercive power] We are doing a six-part series on the types of power
by French and Raven, the power bases,
and in this video we're looking at coercive power.
(electronic music)
Hello there and welcome back.
I'm Alex Lyon and this channel
is called Communication Coach.
And we are here for your professional development.
I specifically speak to emerging leaders.
And one of the issues that we as emerging leaders
need to have a handle on
is the types of power that we have at our disposal.
What kind of tools do we have in our toolbox.
You don't want to get stuck just using one type of power
when you have lots of ways
to influence the people around you.
And stepping back more generally,
French and Raven talk about power as social influence,
the ability of the leader, person A,
to do something or say something that will get the follower,
person B, to comply, to change their beliefs,
their attitude, or their behaviors.
And one of the ways to do that is through coercive power.
In the last video we looked at reward power
and coercive power is the other side of the coin.
Briefly, coercive power is the leader's ability
to punish a follower if the follower does not comply
with an influence attempt.
In other words, I have asked the follower to do something,
and he or she has not done it
and so I give them a punishment.
Coercive power can also be the threat of punishment.
Certainly that is an aspect of coercive power.
They know, because I've said if you don't do this,
X is going to happen, then you want to avoid that punishment
and so the power works.
So coercive power has a couple of sides to the coin.
The first side is giving somebody a punishment
that they do not want.
So you're giving them something they don't want.
For example, a written warning in their file.
That might be embarrassing and they might not want people
to know they haven't performed well.
You can get them extra work as a punishment.
You could put them on a project that they don't wanna do
because it's hard work, really hard work.
You could also do something that sounds like,
quote, yelling at them.
You could just verbally tell them, look,
you did a bad job and you shouldn't have done it,
and that is a kind of punishment because
we don't want to be quote, yelled at.
There's an opening to The Simpsons
and every opening on that cartoon, The Simpsons,
they show Bart writing something on a chalk board
over and over again.
That's an old-fashioned punishment they used to do in school
making people account for, they won't do whatever behavior
again and they have to write it maybe 100 times.
That's a punishment because you're giving them
something they don't want.
Coercive power can also be taking away something
that they do want, so that's a type of punishment.
Maybe you take away their freedom, their privileges.
You take them off of desired projects
that they really want to be on.
Parents do this kind of thing all the time.
We might say, if you don't clean your room
then I will take away your screen time,
I will take away your video game time.
So that's taking away something that they do want.
Let's look deeper into the characteristics
of coercive power that can make it
more of less effective, and the first thing
that makes it somewhat effective
is the size of the punishment.
Now clearly people will care more
if the punishment is big, and they will care less
if the punishment is small.
There is an episode of The Office where
Dwight wrote up a demerit for Jim for being late
and they went through this long sequence of
what does that even mean?
And oh, a demerit equals, three of those equals a citation
and then five citations is a violation,
and the list went on and on and basically
these punishments meant absolutely nothing.
The size of the punishment was so small
that it just didn't matter.
So size of the punishment matters,
but what matters even more according to the research
is the certainty of punishment.
So size of the punishment does affect your judgment,
but if you know, if you're certain
that you will get punished,
then you're much more likely to comply,
even if the punishment is a bit small.
So we can see this all the time
when we're driving on the road.
If you've ever exceeded the speed limit,
you've probably done it because you have a very
low certainty that you will get a speeding ticket.
If every single time we went over the speeding limit,
we got a ticket, we were certain that we would be punished
then we would not speed as much.
Certainly they say matters more
than the size of the punishment.
Which gets at another aspect, a really important aspect
of coercive power, and that is it requires surveillance.
The leader has to keep track of whether or not
people are complying.
They have to build systems of surveillance
and control to make sure everybody's doing
what they're supposed to do.
Because we will not comply
if we think we can get away with it.
Like the speeding ticket.
So it really is a kind of labor intensive,
high-maintenance approach for leaders to use.
If you spend all your time investing in this
coercive power, punishment, surveillance,
it's time you could spend doing something else.
And so unlike reward power,
in that video we talked about how it's win-win
because the leader gets to give the rewards
and the followers get to receive the rewards
and everybody's happy,
coercive power, I personally see it as lose-lose,
because as the leader, now I'm playing the bad person
and I'm giving you punishments,
and as the follower you're receiving punishments,
so it's really lose-lose.
I just don't see the benefit.
So is it effective?
That's the other question people ask.
Is it effective?
And French and Raven say,
well it can be in the short run.
Maybe if you really need something you can punish people
if they don't do it,
but in the long run it's not going to work out very well
for the leader because it's a lose-lose equation.
So eventually they'll just go elsewhere.
If all you use is punishment,
they'll just find some other place
that they're not going to be punished.
Let's apply this to our professional lives
and I'll talk about this a little bit as a teacher.
I don't really have a lot of use of coercive power
when I do consulting but as a college professor
I do use a little bit of coercive power,
mostly for late assignments.
So what I have done is tried to balance certainty
and size of the punishment for late papers
to make sure students go along with it.
So what I do is I take off 10% per day for a late paper.
If I only took off 1%,
then I would get a lot of late papers.
If I took off 50% or 100%, like didn't accept them at all,
that might be a little harsh,
but I have found that 10% is about the right size deduction
to motivate people to hand things in on time.
And then what I do is I make sure it's certain
that they will lose 10%.
So in the course of a semester I have numerous assignments,
and I take off 10% for any late assignment
on the very first assignment.
They're just getting to know my expectations
and I have to enforce it.
But I figured, if I enforce it
when there's very little points overall in the grade,
that first assignment might be a small assignment.
And if I enforce it then
then they will follow along with the rules
and they will start handing all their work in on time.
So it really ends up helping their grade
if I enforce it with certainty in the beginning.
So that's how I use coercive power.
I really don't use it any other way
except for late assignments and absences.
If the absences add up, I will take some off their grade.
So that's how I use it and I'm wondering
how you might use coercive power
and what your thoughts on this type of power.
Certainly it can get a little controversial
if you overuse it, but it is important to know
how and when you might use it more effectively,
so before we go, I have two items
that I want to talk to you about.
The first one is that the next video in this series
goes into legitimate power.
That's another one of the six power bases,
so stick around for that one.
And the second thing I want to offer you
is a free resource, a PDF download.
There's a link in the description below this video
as well as in the first comment in the comment section
that's pinned there, and it leads to
a free resource called
the Essential Professional Communication Skills
that every leader should have.
And it's a PDF download where you follow the link,
you put in your email,
and then I email you this download.
And they're the kinds of skills
that really every professional should possess
and that's totally free,
so I encourage you to check that out.
So thanks, God bless, and I will see you
in the next video on legitimate power.