Power or mere Authority?

It is one of the most frequent thought people get in their mind about a Manager that s/he possess more power than his/her sub-ordinates. How true is that? I'd say not at all. In fact I'd say Sub-ordinates possess more power than their manager. A genuine question comes, how?

Okay now listen, what are the responsibilities of Manager, to get the work done, to keep the sub-ordinates happy, content and motivated, OR just to control their activities. Many managers would think they have got authority to control the activities of sub-ordinates and in turn they have got more power, and as soon as this thought came in his/her mind he has chose the path of self destruction.

Let us think from the perspective, you are a Manager and you need to get a work done from one of your employees but unfortunately that employee couldn't care less about that and he refused to do the task.
What options you have?

- Recommend HR to fire the employee,

- Threaten him about appraisal or

- You’d try to persuade him by understanding the reasons behind his response.

If you chose to go with first two options, you are doomed, you are nothing but going to alleviate the employee and that is because of wrong measures of yours. Instead, if you go with 3rd option, you still have chance to get your task done.

So what was the gap between you and your sub-ordinate which was obstructing the communication between you and that person? Motivation and Authority; you had got the authority but your sub-ordinate didn't have motivation to do that task. So now let us go back to main subject and try to define the Power.

“Power is nothing but an alignment of the authority you have with the motivation your sub-ordinates possess. Without this alignment, you are always less powerful then your sub-ordinates despite of you having more authority.”

How ironic it is? more authority, more responsibilities but still less power. Yes that is the truth and as soon as you realize this you have better chances of becoming a better manager. In fact than instead of Manager, you can call yourself a leader.

So if you are manager or leader, don't think you have got more power with your chair because that chair is of 'authority with many responsibilities' not of power.

"Control Vs Influence"

Its been a long time since I have not been in touch with this place.... either I was very busy or I had no subject to ponder upon...I'd like to believe the first one :-)

Anyway let's start with this one....

At many times, leaders have the misconception that their job is to manage people or supervise people. They miss the fact that machines can be managed, people can't. Recently, I learnt one of the best management concepts I could learn ever and that was "Control Vs Influence".

The first thought which comes to our mind when we think about leadership is that leaders have more control. We tend to think that people, above in the hierarchy, have more control than the people lower in the hierarchy. However, what I learnt and found true, was far different from this.

When we talk about 'control', we tend to forget that there is nothing in the world we can control but the self. If you see the Circle of Control, you'll realize it always remains constant, because its only you who you can control regardless of the position you possess in the hierarchy. Having said that, as you move further in the hierarchy, your decisions and policies influence all the people which are lower in the hierarchy and that means the area of your Circle of Influence expands with the responsibilities you take in your hand while, at the same time, area of your Circle of Concern (things which are caused by external activities) diminishes.

So question is, with the the same Circle of Control, how a CEO manage to expand his/her circle of influence. Answer lies in the intensity of the Control.

Although like a Team Leader, who leads a team of 15-20 people,a CEO also possesses the same area in his/her 'Circle of Control', CEO's Circle of Control is more intense than team leader's. As one grow in the hierarchy, one starts having more control on self and this results into the more influence on others. And as you have more influence on others, you have lesser things of concern.

In nutshell, we do not need to grow our circle of control because that is anyway impossible, we just need to make this circle more intense and that means 'better control on self' to grow our circle of influence and to become a better leader.