Power and Leadership in Organizations: A Comprehensive Report

This report examines the critical role of power in effective leadership, drawing insights from the provided article "Role of Power in Effective Leadership" and personal experiences. The paper delves into the concept of power, differentiating it from leadership, and explores various sources of power, including expertise, information, and relationships. The report analyzes the article's findings, particularly the shift from authoritative to democratic leadership styles and the importance of empowering subordinates. It applies Gibbs' reflective cycle to a personal leadership experience involving a culturally diverse team, discussing the challenges of communication and the use of positional and relational power. The analysis includes evaluation of the experience, with suggestions for future actions, emphasizing the significance of expertise and relationship-building in leadership. The report concludes that effective leadership is intertwined with power dynamics, highlighting the importance of responsible power execution to achieve organizational goals and influence subordinates. References are provided to support the analysis.

Running head: POWER AND LEADERSHIP
POWER AND LEADERSHIP
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Introduction
The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of power in effective leadership. All the two you have
similar meanings but can be distinctly analyzed in term of effect. Power is a process of
exercising leadership and leadership is only supported when the leader has power to execute. The
leadership always has involved attempt on the leader to affect their behavior or a follower in the
situation where as power is not equivalent with the influence on the other person’s behavior.
However in order to influence the subordinates the leader must have power because this is the
only aspect which creates difference between the level of the leader and their followers
(Sekarwinahyu et al., 2019). The leadership power can be related to position, Charisma,
information, expertise, relationship, punishment, empowerment, character, conduct and the
power of perks. In this paper the article named ‘role of power in effective leadership' will be
discussed and the personal experience as a leader executing power will be analyzed.
Discussion of the article
In the article, Role of Power in Effective Leadership', a survey upon the leaders has been
conducted where 94% of leaders have identified themselves having the ultimate power in the
decision making aspect in their organizations. There are factors of empowering the subordinates
by the leaders and very few of the leaders have understood that there is any instance of misuse of
power in the organization by themselves. in this survey mentioned in the article it has been found
that the power of information, the power of relationship and the power of expertise are three
major and frequently leveraged sources of power which make the leaders powerful to the
subordinates. According to the situation has changed. On the other hand the least leveraged
sources of power is the power of punishment where the leader executes his power to punish the
individuals for their failure to attend standard and Expectations of the company (Sekarwinahyu

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et al., 2019). With the change of time the perspective of leadership is changing the authoritative
leadership style is being replaced by the democratic style where the leaders believe upon the
development of relationship with the subordinates to leverage the management of the human
resource in the firm and developed a positive organizational culture.
This article has pointed out that the leaders of the following has suggested that the power of
relationship has metal leveraged buyout the identification of desired relationship and investing
on those relationships to repair damages this can be connected to the hierarchy need theory of
Maslow where the firm is required to understand and give importance to the needs of the
employees to motivate them and utilize their skills in a proper way. The concept of power
leadership therefore is dependent upon the responsibility of the leaders to execute power in its
absolute way. In any organizational setting the leaders at to execute power for achieving the
goals in every way (Hooper & Potter, 2019). Power allows the leaders to influence their
subordinates and achieve greater performance. This insurance that the growth of the organization
will be followed by the effective decision making.
Three points of power leadership
The three most important power of leader pointed out in this article are power of expertise,
power of information and power of relationships.
Power of expertise
This is well known that knowledge is the most important source of power where the expertise of
the leader can influence the followers to follow the right path guided by him. It is the experience
and skills possessed by the leader which convinces the subordinates that the leader has proper
information to make decisions and all the evidences to win an argument. With the power there

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comes the responsibility of the wellbeing of the subordinates therefore the power of information
helps the leaders to achieve their own individual goals so that the profit making scenerio of the
organization can be attained so also the wellbeing of the employees (Salovaara & Bathurst,
2018).
Power of relationships
This particular discussion of power and leadership also connects the presence of Hierarchy in the
organizations. In a flatter organizational structure the hierarchy of levels in leadership is less than
and the other one. This is due to the fact that in a flat organizational setting, the levels of the
leaders are less. for example in an organization where there is existence of employees in the
ground level and only one higher level of team leaders then the execution of power is less . On
the other hand in an organization if has different levels of leadership then the lower level leaders
feel less powerful then and the higher level authorities. The survey in this particular article have
shown that most of the leaders are aware of their level of power therefore they do not think
themselves less powerful or extremely powerful rather balance between the responsibility or duty
with the execution of power . The server has pointed out that in the modern context of
organizational setting the empowerment of the subordinates actually empower the leaders. This
is due to the fact that difference of skills and points of view have brought prosperity in the skill
gap of the companies. This is the reason why the leaders are focusing upon empowering the
employees more so that they are motivated in such a way which enables them to contribute their
skills for the growth of the companies and achieving the goals.
Power of information
The leaders of any organization causes more information than the subordinates because they
have more responsibility to promote the agenda of the organizations as well as m8tigatw the

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conflicts among the interest groups. This is the reason why the leaders collect information from
different agents and analyses them for their authentication. Power of information also helps them
to make right decision in the critical time also.
Personal experience
Gibbs reflective cycle is consisted of six components which include description, feelings,
evaluation, analysis, and Conclusion and action plan (Wain, 2017). The personal experience of
executing power as a leader relates to the incident of managing a culturally diverse team. My
team was responsible to develop a project but communication among the team members were not
up to the mark. As the difference of culture among the team members were higher therefore, the
language issues, and proper deciphering of the messages were increasing challenges. In addition
to this, the thought process of all the team members were completely different which led the
development of ego among them preventing any scope for proper communication (Aritz et al.,
2017). Being the team leader I was responsible to execute any type of power to attain the goal. I
needed to execute power of leadership at such a level so that I can influence the team members to
complete the project effectively within the deadline. In the feelings category it can be said that as
a leader I was really very worried regarding this issue of communication in this culturally diverse
team. I was thinking about different ways to increase personal relationship among the team
members so that the communication system gets leveraged. I therefore made all my team
members and pointed out this particular problem creating barrier for perfect achievement of
project development within time.
I have evaluated both the good and bad about this experience where most of the team members
were not ready to accept the difference of culture initially and wanted to dominate this project
depending upon their own skills. The good thing however was that I executed the power of

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position and made them realize the importance of team work. This led many of them to
understand the cultural difference and realize the importance of communication in completing
the project. In the analysis part I have contemplated to arrange personal gathering of the team
members other than the task meeting (Riggio, 2017). Other than arranging meeting about the
issues within the team I could have followed this process in this situation. To conclude I could
have promote the power of relationship other than the power of position in this case. In the future
if this type of incident takes place then I will never be using the owner of position but will
execute the power of relationships and expertise. To me the leaders must possess more
knowledge than the subordinates which will lead them to admire the leader and acknowledge the
supremacy.
Conclusion
Therefore it can be concluded that the leadership as a use connection with the power execution.
The leadership process always has involved attempt on the leaders in terms of style to affect the
behavior of the leaders themselves or the followers in the situation to achieve the organizational
goals. Whereas the power is not equivalent with the influence on the other person’s behavior but
help the leaders to bring the employees to the right path in many a ways either through
empowerment or punishment. However, it needs to be acknowledged that with power comes
greater responsibility.

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References
Aritz, J., Walker, R., Cardon, P., & Li, Z. (2017). Discourse of leadership: The power of
questions in organizational decision making. International Journal of Business
Communication, 54(2), 161-181.
Hooper, A., & Potter, J. (2019). The business of leadership: Adding lasting value to your
organization. Routledge.
Riggio, R. E. (2017). Power, Persuasion, and Bad Leadership. Why Irrational Politics Appeals:
Understanding the Allure of Trump, 71.
Salovaara, P., & Bathurst, R. (2018). Power-with leadership practices: An unfinished
business. Leadership, 14(2), 179-202.
Sekarwinahyu, M., Rustaman, N. Y., Widodo, A., & Riandi, R. (2019, February). Development
of problem based learning for online tutorial program in plant development using Gibbs’
reflective cycle and e-portfolio to enhance reflective thinking skills. In Journal of Physics:
Conference Series (Vol. 1157, No. 2, p. 022099). IOP Publishing.
Wain, A. (2017). Learning through reflection. British Journal of Midwifery, 25(10), 662-666.