Reflection on Facilitation Workshop on Power and Influence

This report reflects on a facilitation workshop conducted on the topic of power and influence. It discusses the design of the workshop, challenges faced, and the results achieved. Improvements and conclusions are also presented.

REFLECTION

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Design of the workshop.............................................................................................................3
Result of the workshop...............................................................................................................4
Need for improvements..............................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
Reference list..............................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
Our group has conducted a facilitation workshop and main objective of this report is to
explain my reflection. We have conducted this workshop by forming a group of three and my
teammates are from India whereas I am from Malaysia. The topic upon which the facilitation
workshop was done is "Power". As I and my teammates are from different cultures. So we
have faced some initial problem in designing this workshop. The workshop was conducted
successfully as we focused on common group goal. In this report, discussion about designing
of workshop and challenges that we have faced has been explained.
Design of the workshop
Our group includes three members and all of us are holding different perspectives. We
decided that we must conduct research on Power to understand the meaning of this word and
its impact on other people. Our research has helped us to know that power refers to ability of
individuals to influence others for gaining specific benefits (Sturm and Antonakis 2015). We
were confident enough that finding a real-time case related to power can help us to explain it
properly. For this reason, we searched and found the real case study of the CEO of Apple. I
had realized that this case study can be considered as relevant because it has explained the
power of the CEO of Apple. When the first meeting with my team members has been
scheduled, I was anxious about this part of the workshop. Gradually we communicated with
each other and we combined our perspectives to achieve common goal of explaining
"Power". Collaborative effort of us has helped to identify different categories of Power and
their impact on others within organizations.
I was assigned to prepare half of the kinds and contingencies of power. One of my team
members took responsibility of rest of the kinds and case study to carry out and another one
was assigned to work on the tactics related to power. We were happily researching on our
assigned parts for learning new things. After three days of researching, we met again to
designing structure of the workshop. I have found that contingencies of power have four
major categories such as visibility, centrality, substitutability, and discretion (Mudambi and
Navarra 2015). I have gathered evidence to explain these categories to my team members. As
I was soft-spoken I was facing difficulty in explaining. However, my team members have
cooperated with me and they understood the exact concepts of these four categories of
contingencies of power. They did not know about the part assigned to me and only I had the
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prior knowledge regarding contingencies of power. It can be said that I have used
Information power to gather information regarding contingencies of power (Kras, Portillo and
Taxman 2017).
At first, we have developed a plan to do a role play to explain power. Later we all have
realized that this process is not relevant enough to describe theories of power. After that, we
have started a game by giving role to participants and power needs to be chosen as well as
explained by participants. It has been found that this process was more relevant than our
previous plan of role play.
Result of the workshop
Overall result of this workshop is good and different concepts that are decided on group
meetings are properly achieved and understood. However, some aspects are not covered in a
proper way initially. A conceptual gap was there in the activity because specific impact of
power on a definite role was not described by us. This has created confusion and impacted
our workshop. It was found that power is used to exert will on another person (Hooghe and
Marks 2015).
I face challenges during presentation of the results as I am very soft spoken, which was
informed by my lecturer. Moreover, I was very much anxious regarding my part, which I was
preparing. It was about contingencies of power. I have quickly spoken my part and did not
explain each point clearly. However, I have given some relevant examples during
presentation, which was praised by my lecturer. Power and influence is a broad concept that
we have elaborated through different real-life examples. Influence can be used to impact on
behavior of others (Labun, Wittek and Steglich 2016). Presentation of these examples has
increased attractiveness of our presentation and a good impression was created in front of
lecturer. This is because providing real-life examples proves that we have gathered in-depth
knowledge regarding various theories and concepts about the subject area (Jia et al. 2015).
However, improvements are required in that can help to increase performance in future.
Need for improvements
I need to improve working skills and ability to work with people from different cultures must
be improved. It can be seen that in this group we are from different cultures, which can create
problem. However, later this issue was solved because we had same mother tong. Moreover,
a gap occurs regarding impact of power on different roles like doctor and policemen are not
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described. This has created confusion during presentation, which can be mitigated by
collecting proper knowledge about structuring of activities in a workshop. This can help
increase the ability to work as a team and organization of different activities can be done in
an error-free way.
Conclusion
This workshop has helped me to gain a good understanding of power and influence. Different
theories of power and its impact are learned in a proper way. Moreover, different personal
skills have been improved through this workshop and presentation. Skill of communication
and problem solving are improved. Different gaps in my personality were also identified in
this study. I learned that power can be used to exert will of a person among others by
overcoming potential resistance. On another hand, influence can be applied to change
thought, attitude and behavior of a person. Vast knowledge about working in a group has
been collected by conducting this facilitation workshop. While working in a group, proper
motivation and concentrating on group objectives is essential. I have collected experience
regarding working in a diverse culture, solving complex problems that can impact on project
and organization of activities in a project. This can help me in future academic and
professional career.
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Reference list
Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks, 2015. “Delegation and pooling in international
organizations.” The Review of International Organizations, 10(3): 305-328. DOI
10.1007/s11558-014-9194-4
Jia, Peng, Anahita MirTabatabaei, Noah E. Friedkin, and Francesco Bullo, 2015. “Opinion
dynamics and the evolution of social power in influence networks.” SIAM review, 57(3): 367-
397. DOI. 10.1137/130913250
Kras, Kimberly R., Shannon Portillo, and Faye S. Taxman, 2017. “Managing from the
Middle: Frontline Supervisors and Perceptions of Their Organizational Power.” Law &
Policy, 39(3): 215-236. https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12079
Labun, Alona, Rafael Wittek, and Christian Steglich, 2016. “The co-evolution of power and
friendship networks in an organization.” Network Science, 4(3): 364-384. DOI:
10.1017/nws.2016.7
Mudambi, Ram, and Pietro Navarra, 2015. "Is knowledge power? Knowledge flows,
subsidiary power, and rent-seeking within MNCs." In The Eclectic Paradigm 5(2): 157-191.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3875201
Sturm, Rachel E., and John Antonakis, J., 2015. “Interpersonal power: A review, critique, and
research agenda.” Journal of Management, 41(1): 136-163.
https://serval.unil.ch/resource/serval:BIB_1F6C29A616C0.P001/REF.pdf
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