Strengths and Weaknesses in Terms of Power One May Hold as the Manager - Essay Example

?Strengths and Weaknesses in Terms of Power One May Hold as the Manager Every manager needs power in one form or the other in order to influence colleagues and subordinates effectively regardless of their willingness or unwillingness to respond. For instance, it is not every day that employees are motivated to work, and an expression of power by their boss in one form or the other can motivate them to work; a person needs power in order to exert their will on others, especially in times of disagreements (Vatiero, 2009). A manager should be able to make decisions during the course of one’s duty, and have the power to see those decisions through the implementation stage. Power means different things to different people, whereby some people believe that an expression of power in one form or the other is vital at the workplace. On the other hand, other people believe that expression of power is a trivial matter that should not be of concern to anybody (Pip, 2008: 93). Regardless of one’s perception or belief, power is an indispensable component of day-to-day life at the workplace, especially as perceived by subordinates, even though it may not have a significant impact on the boss. The main sources of power include formal power and personal power; formal power includes coercive, reward and legitimate, while personal power includes expertise and referent power. This essay discusses the merits and demerits of the five main forms of power for a manager in the NHS. Coercive Power Coercive power exploits the fear element of subordinates to get them to do the bidding of the manager; this includes threats of demotion, loss of jobs or projects and poor performance reviews. The only way a manager gets this power is through threatening others with the consequences of failing to perform their obligations to the system or orders of their boss to the required standards. The major strength of this form of power is that a manager can get things done regardless of employee attitudes, which is indispensable for tasks that are not appealing or too demanding in terms of time, energy and other resources. Moreover, it is crucial especially when employees have not been used to doing a certain task, and forcing them to do it acts as a way of achieving results before they are motivated enough to work without much coercion. On the contrary, this form of power causes loss of interest in the job due to lack of positive motivating factors in the job; employees do just the bare minimum to avoid the consequences of not doing so. This results in poor service delivery and high employee turnover; the former may result in loss of customers due to loss of competitive edge, while the latter reduces profitability due to the high costs of increased rate of employee turnover (Singh, 2009: 377). Reward Power Reward power is the opposite of coercive power and is a form of positive motivation, whereby a manager fulfils the basic needs of employees and gives them a chance to fulfil their higher needs in their daily work. For instance, a manager may reward employee compliance with salary raises, bonuses, time offs, praise, recognition and other employee wishes; a practise that motivates employees to do more of the actions or behaviours for which they were rewarded. The main advantage of this form of power is that it uses the employees’ needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to keep them motivated, and objectives of the organisation are met in line with those of employees. Moreover, it creates a healthy relationship between the manager and subordinates, which increased the optimal performance of the latter in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. The main disadvantage of this form of power is that employee performance is negatively affected by change in management, as it is dependent on the motivation offered by the manager. In addition, as the manager motivates the employees, they become accustomed being rewarded and with time feel that they deserve the rewards they get; this profoundly affects their performance especially if there are no enough resources to acquire the rewards (Marquis and Huston, 2009: 296). Legitimate Power The manager’s position in the NHS, and their duties and responsibilities as the boss or a member of the management team are a source of power. This power is expressed when one makes crucial decisions that affect the income, expenditure and resources available for the system. If used correctly, this power is beneficial as it gives a manager the capacity to influence the NHS positively and improve service delivery to customers (Longest, 2004). However, legitimate power has high chances of corrupting the personal integrity of the manager, mainly due to the vast resources at their disposal. This means that a person has to have high integrity, transparency, and accountability for this power to be expressed productively; otherwise, it results in wastage of resources and losses. Moreover, a person who depends on position as the only source of power loses the power and some self-esteem once one loses the position that gives the power (Bass and Riggio, 2006: 184). However, legitimate power cannot be expressed in exclusion of other forms of power; it is highly dependent on a manager’s ability to employ other sources of power to supplement their legitimate power. Expertise Power By virtue of being knowledgeable, experienced, and skilled in one’s field of specialization, the manager has the power of a thought leader in that field. This power enables the manager to get others to work together with him/her to meet their goals as they help him/her meet his/her goals, especially since the manager can demonstrate the capability to perform tasks more than any of the subordinates. Moreover, this power is useful in acting as a reference point and helping others in areas of difficulty, and giving skills to others in the form of formal or informal training (Morse, 2008). However, expert power has its limitations too; for instance, rapid technological development makes many skills out-dated at a rapid rate. This means that a manager who depends on one’s expertise for power becomes powerless and ineffective once one’s skill loses market to give way to more relevant skills. In order to sustain expert power in the long-term, a manager should strive to maintain relevance in the market by updating existing skills and by acquiring new skills as per market demands; therefore, expert power may be costly to sustain. Moreover, expertise should not be a source of power since professional skills should be used for the service of others, not to exert power over them (Erchul and Martens, 2010: 49). Referent Power There is nothing as motivating to a subordinate as a trustworthy and dependable leader, especially knowing that one can always be trusted to do one's job with the utmost integrity, transparency and accountability. A manager in the NHS may express this form of power by having these qualities and practising healthy relationships with subordinates, and inculcating these qualities into all the people with whom a manager interacts. Moreover, this form of power is advantageous to its holder as it opens up numerous opportunities as everyone wants to work with someone they can depend on to work with little or no supervision (Heldman, 2009). This form of power can be transmitted to others, such that it is common for a manager with referent power to have subordinates with high levels of integrity, transparency and accountability; all these qualities are required for sustenance of quality service delivery. Fairness to subordinates endears the manager to them, and they perform their duties without much coercion, which improves both the quality and quantity of the output of one’s department. Like all other forms of power, referent power has one main shortcoming; it only survives as long as the manager can maintain consistency in the factor that gives one power. For instance, if the manager is suspected to have committed one mistake that may affect dependability, then this power is lost in an instance and may take years to rebuild broken trust (Daft and Marcic, 2010: 390). However, this power can be regained if a manager can prove innocence to the claims, though the secondary form of power is not as effective as the one that existed before it. Conclusion Power is a vital component of any leadership as it enables a leader to involve others in achieving the objectives of the firm or organisation while achieving their personal objectives. The expression of power depends on the personality and perception of the leader, whereby one adopts destructive forms of power if one is insecure about one’s position or capabilities and vice versa. The five main forms of power include coercive power, reward power, legitimate power, expert power and referent power. While all these forms of power are relevant to service delivery in the NHS, they also have their shortcomings for which managers should look out. Moreover, all these forms of power can be lost in changing circumstances at the workplace, especially those that expose a real or imagined negative aspect of the leader in question. However, as long as a manager does one’s duty with as much diligence as possible, then a combination of these sources of power will always work to increase one’s credibility and improve the relationship between managers and subordinates. References Bass, B.M., & Riggio, R.E. (2006) Transformational leadership, Routledge. Daft, R.L., & Marcic, D. (2010) Understanding management, Cengage Learning. Erchul, W.P., & Martens, B.K. (2010) School consultation: conceptual and empirical bases of practice, Springer. Heldman, K. (2009) PMP project management professional exam study guide, John Wiley & Sons. Longest, B.B. (2004) Managing health programs and projects, John Wiley & Sons. Marquis, B.L., & Huston, C.J. (2009) Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: theory and application, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Morse, R.S. (2008) Innovations in public leadership development, M.E. Sharpe. Pip, J. (2008) Introducing social theory, Polity Press, Cambridge. Vatiero, M. (2009) Understanding power: a 'law and economics' approach, VDM Verlag. Singh, K. (2009) Organizational behaviour: text and cases, Pearson Education India. Read More