How Great Managers Use Power And Authority
Managers use power and authority in so many different ways. The power and authority you gain from a position is only one type of power and I would argue, increasing ineffective – on its own – in today’s workplace. Every manager has power from their position. Why are some managers incredibly effective, have very supportive teams and get a ton of things delivered? Why do other managers with the same positional power meet resistance and feet dragging from their teams and struggle to achieve much at all?
How managers and leaders use power and authority are a huge part of their effectiveness in their roles. Using power and authority carefully and effectively is a necessary part of a manager’s or leader’s job. To use power and authority well, you have to build it in the first place.
How Great Managers Use Power And Authority
1. Why having power and authority is essential to manage and lead
2. Use your power and authority to elevate, empower and improve to maximise success
3. Why using your power and authority for the good of the team is so important
4. 7 ways to build power and authority as a manager
I have worked in many top companies and have had a 20+ year management going from junior manager through to board director. I have seen lots of different ways managers and leaders use power and learnt a lot personally about using different types of power to get the best from my teams and achieve great results.
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Having power and authority is essential to manage and lead
Without any power, would any of your team follow you? Without some power and authority, you would struggle to delegate and struggle to set team direction. You would find developing others a lot harder. Removing problems and obstacles that are hindering the team would be hard, if not impossible, without some power and authority.
Power and authority are both essential to be able to manage and lead with any credibility and effectiveness.
Power and authority are neither good nor bad. Using power and authority are a key part of how human groups function. Everyone has different levels of power and authority at work and in every group in our lives. Power and authority are intwined through everything we do involving others. It is not just humans that have social structures and hierarchies. Look at any pack animal and there is a pecking order.
I would argue that to be an effective manager or leader, you need to work at building different types of power. The more power and authority you gather, the more effective you can be at your job of managing and leading others. More power means you can create a bigger positive impact for your team and business.
How you use the power you have is a huge factor for your success and for those around you.
People want to and chose to follow managers and leaders that use power to help the group; that use power in service of others. The impact of using power to help others is very different from using power to help yourself at the expense of others.
Use your power and authority to elevate, empower and improve
Managers are much more dependent on others to do their job well compared to an employee or worker. Managers have far less direct control over the output of their work and effort. There are lots of ways managers can misuse their power to give them a feeling of greater control over the team they lead. Some include
- Withholding information to make the team members more dependent on the manager
- Putting others down, embarrassing them, damaging their confidence etc to maintain a more dominate controlling position over them
- Providing regular corrective feedback without providing any or much positive feedback – again a way to maintain more direct control
- Withholding interesting work and development opportunities
- Misrepresenting individuals to their boss and to more senior management
- Taking credit for the work of others
- Restricting team member access to influential people within the business
And there are plenty more.
Mis-using Power Doesn’t Help You
These misuses of power and authority quickly damage trust, teamwork and motivation. The result is lower team performance and an unhappy team, which in turn damages the manager’s standing and reputation across the business.
Using your power to elevate, empower and improve team members will massively increase team performance over the long term when combined with other good management practices. I know from the personal experience of turning around multiple underperforming teams in different companies and winning multiple Best Team prizes – again with different teams. As a manager, helping others be better is one of the best ways you can help yourself. Your performance is assessed on your team’s performance.
10 practical examples of how great managers use power and authority
To elevate, empower and improve team members:
- Openly share information with team members that enable them to do a better job, to understand the company direction and performance, and to help them build productive relationships with all colleagues
- Praise great decisions, actions, behaviours and results. Make team members feel valued and an important part of the overall business.
- Provides lots more positive feedback than corrective feedback. Do provide both.
- Do your best to develop your team members through the work they do, the coaching and mentoring you provide and any other means available. Better skills usually lead to better performance, and also happier staff who stay longer.
- Tell your boss and senior managers about the achievements of specific team members. Give them a fair and honest picture of who is good and why and who is working at improving.
- Give credit for the great work of others wherever you can. They will want to do more work for you, which in turn helps you achieve more.
- Help your team build relationships with a wide variety of people in the business. The stronger the relationships, the more influence they will be able to exert to do their jobs well, help colleagues and support the success of the team.
- Be really clear what your expectations are and what good looks like. This empowers and helps individuals work towards meeting and beating these expectations and goals.
- Create opportunities for team members to be responsible and take ownership of their areas, tasks and activities. Agree goals but don’t specify how to achieve them. Be on hand to help and support but not to instruct unless they are stuck.
- Create consistency by thinking through the impact of your decisions, actions and behaviours on the team before undertaking them. Providing consistency gives reassurance, safety, authority and encourages a ton of performance improving behaviours in your team such as measured risk taking, learning, decision making etc.
Use Power Carefully
There are so many ways to use power and authority as a manger to elevate, empower and improve your team members. This is a great way to use the power you have to help others.
why using your power and authority for the good of the team is so important
People are happy to follow and support those that use power and authority for the good of the group. The individual gains by supporting a leader that increases team performance; makes the working environment more enjoyable, creates better development opportunities etc.
People are very reluctant to follow those that use power and authority to help themselves at the expense of others. Employees in these teams grudgingly do what is asked of them, do the minimum to avoid negative consequences, be obstructive in subtle or overt ways etc. A culture of fear and uncertainty is much more likely. These leaders typically make life worse for the individuals in the team, not better. Working is much less enjoyable. Team results are worse. Development is lower etc. Getting average team performance in these circumstances is hard work.
Use Power For The Good Of Others
Using power well and for the group’s benefit means everyone in the group is better off. Working for the benefit of others is a great way to build trust and goodwill quickly. Employing the power you have to intelligently: organise your team and the work they do, to cut through vested interests, to challenge the status quo, to protect your team from distractions, to solve problems, to remove distractions … there is a long list of areas that the manager is best placed to improve. Use the power you have to help others, and you are much more likely to have a happy, motivated and higher performing team. These positive factors will lead to a bigger team, more promotions, more influence etc – very good news for you personally.
People happily follow and support leaders that work for the teams they manage. How a person manages and uses power is a real test of a that person’s character. Use power and authority well for the good of the team and the business – and you are likely to be given more power and authority.
7 actions to build power and authority as a manager
There are many different types of power and authority a person can build, with 5 of the main ones being:
- The power and authority of a position and the perceived dependence on the person in that position
- Being good at persuading and influencing others
- Creating a sense of obligation to the group or to an individual
- Building trust and relationships across the organisation
- Demonstrating professional competence – being very good at your job
All of these give you power and authority in different ways. A manager or leader should seek to build their power and authority in as many of these areas as practical. Diversity of your power and authority base helps as much as depth in each one.
Here are 7 actions to help you increase the power and authority you have:
- Very carefully advertise why the other person is dependant on your good opinion – examples include for bonus recommendations, promotions, for increasing their visibility and building their reputation with senior staff members etc. Use positive positioning rather than implied threats.
- Improve your listening and empathy skills, which in turn will help you increase your persuasion skills. Knowing your audience is critical to be good at persuading and influencing them.
- Do as much as you can to help other people when they need help. They will feel more obliged to help you when you ask for it. This is reciprocity which is a very powerful social rule hardwired into human behaviour.
- Create a meaningful purpose and vision for what you and your team do. Common purpose and interdependence within a team is a powerful motivator. Very few people want to let the group and colleagues down
- Build good relationships widely in your business. Relationships and the trust that goes with them allows you to exert a lot more influence in a lot less time – compared to not having these relationships.
- Work to be good at your job. Set aside time to develop your skills and improve what you do. Investing in yourself is good for so many reasons.
- Internally market your achievements and work on building your good reputation within the business. The bigger your organisation, the more you have to work on communicating to others the great things you are doing for them to be really noticed.
Think of all the other ways that you could increase your power and authority in the 5 key areas outlined. Start small and keep building. With a little thought, confidence and work, you will be able to increase your power and authority, which increases the positive impact you can make on your team and business.
in summary
Every manager and leader needs to build power and authority to enable them to do their job well. Having power is not good or bad. How you use the power you have is critically important.
Use your power and authority to help others and to make life for your team members better. Use your power and authority to serve the best interests of your business. Do not use power to help yourself at the expense of others. This is easy to say and not so easy to do in practice. Work hard at using power for positive reasons and to help others and you will be a lot better off in the long term.
If you have any questions, please email me at enhance.training and I will get back to you.
[More on using power and authority in leadership positions – click here]
