Leadership Lesson 1 - The Four Powers of Leadership

 Goals:

1. Recognize the importance of leadership to organizational success.
2. Identify important leadership characteristics
3. Describe the four types of power leaders use to shape organizations
   

Leadership is defined as the ability to influence individuals and groups to cooperatively achieve organizational goals. Leaders must have a number of different qualities. Think of leaders that you have seen in action. List three characteristics that you think effective leaders must have. Share these with the class. 

Think: Are all managers leaders? Are there leaders who have no management position?

 Listen to what former Army General, White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of State Colin Powell says is the essence of leadership. 

Take a look at the list of characteristics given by your classmates. How does Colin Powell's concepts of leadership tie all of these together? 

Leadership Power

To achieve their goals, managers must use power to influence people.

• Position Power - comes from the power that the manager holds within the organization. The manager has the authority to give directions and expect the employee to complete the work.
• Reward Power - this power comes from the managers ability to control rewards and punishments.
• Expert Power - this type of power comes is power bestowed by employees based on a manager's expertise or skill in performing a task.
• Identity Power - when employees strive to become like the manager or seek his/her approval, this is known as identity power.

While the first two types of power come from the organization, the last two come from the employees themselves. A company may give a manager position or reward power, expert and identity power come from the employees.

Watch the following clip from the movie Glory. What types of power does the staff sergeant use to motivate an insubordinate soldier? What types of power demonstrate evidence of effective leadership?

Assignment:

Analyze the following scenarios. Explain which of the four types of power are being used and why. Write your answers on a sheet of paper and turn them in a the end of class for your daily grade. (10 points)

1. Amy has been supervising her shift at a local fast food restaurant for a month. When she first started, she had problems getting Jaylin to come in to work on time. He was a hard worked and knew a lot about how all of the equipment worked so he was a valuable member of her staff. But his being late to work caused the other employees to have to do his job until he came in. When asked about it, Jaylin always had excuses. Either he had been caught by a train crossing or his alarm didn't go off or he had misplaced his keys. Finally, Amy called Jaylin to her office after work one day. She insisted that he either start getting to work on time or he could start looking for other work. His work habits had caused a lot of resentment among the other employees and this needed to stop. Jaylin objected, saying that he wasn't motivated to get to work on time because he had not received a raise in over a year. Amy promised that she would see about getting him a raise but he would have to start getting to work on time first. The next morning, not only was Jaylin on time, he was early. For the next month, Jaylin was either on time or a little early to work. One day after work, Amy called him into her office to let him know that she has noticed his success at getting to work on time. She told Jaylin that he was now getting a raise. Jaylin was thrilled. He thanked Amy and said he appreciated the opportunity that she had given him.
What leadership power did Amy use to get Jaylin motivated to get to work on time?

2. Will always admired Tom's skill with wood-working tools. Tom owned a small cabinet shop in the town where they both lived. He was a middle aged man with strong hands, had worked in cabinetry all his life. Tom knew how to create cabinets that looked so solid that it appeared that they were carved out of a single piece of wood. Will had always admired his work. While he was in a high school wood working class, his teacher had introduced him to Tom. When Will graduated high school, he decided that he wanted to work in Tom's shop and asked for a job. Tom agreed to take him on as a paid  apprentice until he thought Will was ready to work as a full employee. Over a period of six months. Will not only learned wood-working skills from Tom, he learned how Tom approached projects and how he led his employees. Will began to not only work like Tom, he began to talk like Tom as well. Some of Will's fellow workers began to joke and call Will "Little Tom." That was okay with Will. He loved and admired Tom. After a year of working in the shop, Tom declared Will a craftsman and hired him on as a full-time worker. Will was grateful for the opportunity and thanked Tom for his trust in him.
What type of leadership power did Tom use in getting Will motivated to excellence?

3. Michelle was the floor manager for MetalTech, a automobile parts manufacturing business in a large mid-western city. She had been promoted to that position after working at the company just two years. Michelle had a way of working with employees and getting the best out of them. She had been promoted to shift supervisor after working there for just six months. Just one year later she was promoted to her current position of floor manager. It was a more stressful job but Michelle seemed to thrive on the day to day work of managing her department. One day, a worker reported to Michelle that one of the stamping machines had "frozen up." After inspecting the machine, Michelle could find nothing wrong. She inspected the power supply and everything seemed normal but the machine was not getting power from the building. She couldn't figure out why there was no power. Clearly, there was some information she was missing. She knew that the machine had been installed years earlier and that Jake, the VP of operations and previous floor manager had been there when it was installed. She decided to call Jake to see if he could shed any light on the problems they were having. When Jake arrived, he explained how the power supply for the machine had been set up. It was far more complicated than Michelle had understood. They both looked at the wiring diagram for the building and traced the problem back to a breaker in a remote part of the building. After some additional wiring work, they were able to get the machine back up and running.
What type of leadership power did Jake exercise in getting the machine fixed?

4. Sonya was the head nurse at a hospital in a mid-sized city. It was her job to supervise and schedule a team of 20 nurses to care for the patients on her floor. Kalvin was new to the job, so Sonya had scheduled Kalvin to work nights and weekends. This was standard practice for all new hires in the department since most of the veteran nurses already had the most favorable schedules. Kalvin as undeterred by the difficult hours. He worked hard and tried to do the job as efficiently as possible. He came to work on-time and often stayed late to make sure everything was in good shape for the following shift. Sonya began to notice Kalvin's hard work. After three months, one of the nurses on the first shift left to take another job in another city where her husband had found work. Kalvin requested a move to the first shift since it would allow him to spend more time with his family. Sonya agreed to the shift change and allowed Kalvin to work during the days and only one weekend a month. Kalvin was thrilled with the schedule change.
What type of leadership power did Sonya use?


Study: Be ready to take a quiz over the following terms at the beginning of our next class. You can study these items on Quizlet.

• Leadership
• Position Power
• Reward Power
• Expert Power
• Identity Power