The Fragile Balance between Power and Leadership - article review

If you’re coaching, leadership is some part of what you do.  Coaching individuals, a team of athletes or managing a larger staff of coaches all require different degrees of leadership.  Jones & York (2016) address leadership and power dynamics in their article The Fragile Balance of Power and Leadership and specifically the difference between having power versus developing leadership skills. We’ve done a book review and research article abstracts so far, so now it’s time to add a review/critique of a peer-review research article…

 

Here are 4 points from the article:

 

 

1. Leadership tripod

Jones & York describe leadership as a working relationship between people, but also include a third component to create a “leadership tripod”.  The third component is common ground or a common goal which creates an “us” mindset among the team and protects the leader from being positioned as a “glory-seeker”.  Basically, two parties working together isn’t quite enough – there should be a common ground to build the relationship.

 

2. Social Coordination 

Social Coordination in a leadership context is improving corporation among the group.  A distinction is made between attempts to control the group compared to accomplishing tasks with motivational influence.  A quote from Jarie Bolander suggests that a leader can both create vision and direction while simultaneously “leaving the path open” for others to grow and develop their own leadership skills.

 

3. Dignifying each employee

Most desire to be heard, and the first step is genuine listening, but the idea of dignifying the employee goes further.  This idea includes investing in others’ development and plugging employees into a process connected to the success of the team. 

 

4. Bases of Power

I first head of the 5 bases of power from Brett Bartholomew (ArtofCoaching.com), so I was glad to see them here with definitions and instances of use.  The 5 bases of power are:

·       Reward Power

·       Coercive Power

·       Legitimate Power

·       Referent Power

·       Expert Power

 

Covering these would be it’s own topic, but they are essentially different ways in which a person might exert influence over another.  I’ve had mixed feelings (negative connotations) about the idea of “power” but understanding that power dynamics are part of leadership and human interaction has been helpful.  This article does a nice job of summarizing the bases of power and how they can be used for more effective leadership.

 

If you’re interested in power dynamics and how they relate to coaching and leadership, I’d also strongly encourage you to check out Brett’s work at ArtofCoaching.com and specially his podcast (episode 63: Power Dynamics in Leadership) on this topic.

 

Links

The Fragile Balance between Power and Leadership

 

Art of Coaching podcast on Power Dynamics