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Power: Abuse It, Lose It
The Tricky Part Isn't Getting More, It's Using More - or Less

By Mark W. Sheffert
June 2004

Lord Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, the 19th-century British historian, put his finger on a dilemma of leadership when he said,  “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men…There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”

Recent history and current events provide us with abundant examples: Saddam Hussein, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Manuel Noriega, even our own Richard Nixon. These leaders had as much power in their respective countries as they ever could have wanted, but they abused it – and lost it.

Government leaders aren’t alone in their hubris. Look at recent scandals in the Catholic Church, where clergy abused the trust of their followers, or the numerous cases of executive wrongdoings.

In all of these cases, it was the people – the followers, not the leaders – who ultimately stopped the abuse of power.

Who Empowers

Business leaders who abuse power often start out being competent and effective. But as they move up through the ranks, they are smitten by their own influence. Their need for more and more power and their eventual misuse of it turns them into monsters who finally topple when people refuse to follow them any longer. As John Milton, the 17th-century poet, wrote: “The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what only is derivative, transformed and committed to them in trust from the people to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their natural birthright.”

Now, some people don’t like the idea that business leaders exert power over others. They believe that leaders should promote teamwork and equality, motivate only by reward, and simply create a common vision to which others blissfully devote themselves. Unfortunately, this thinking is altruistic. The hard fact is that leaders have to have a certain amount of control or things simply won’t get done. If this reality bothers you, you need to get over it or go work for yourself!

What mitigates against an excess of control is that while leaders exercise power, it is their constituencies who have power.  People determine whether or not they want to follow – and no one can be a leader without a following.

Types of Power

Power is granted to leaders in different ways.  Authoritarian power is the power vested in an office by society.  Monarchs, popes, and military leaders, for example, are all obeyed because of their positions.

Referent power comes from followers who want to identify with a charismatic leader.  Winston Churchill’s sheer force of personality allowed him to be one of the greatest war-time leaders in history.  But when the war ended, Briton’s need for this type of leader faded, and Churchill was quickly voted out of office.

Perhaps the most common type of leadership exercised in business is expert power. In this case, subordinates have rational faith that their managers know what they are doing based on proven knowledge and abilities.

A fourth type is representative power, or the power of participation. Subordinates participate in deciding what needs to be done and how. As a result, they have a better understanding of the decision and a motivating sense of accomplishment. Leaders who follow this model understand that power is not a zero-sum game. They know that power can expand or contract; sharing it with followers will not make a leader lose power.

And Types of Powerful People

There are hard leaders who misuse power, and soft leaders who don’t wield enough of it. But most leaders are somewhere in between – the best place to be – leaning one way or the other as circumstances dictate. Francis Bacon was already articulating this idea in the 1600s, when he wrote his essay titled “Of Empire”: “Nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far and relaxed too much.”

While there is not one right or wrong way to use power, under no circumstances should leaders misuse their power for private gain. This is directly related to personal values. There are managers who set business goals and effectively manage the key resources of the organization to achieve them, and then there are managers who put their own personal agenda first. These leaders have little self-control and make everyone around them fearful by barking orders from their big offices. They surrender the values they might once have upheld. And as Ron Todd, a trade union leader, said in 1980s, “You don’t have power if you surrender all your principles – you have office.“

When I think of position and power, I’m reminded of the story of the three pheasant hunters who didn’t have a hunting dog. They saw a sign outside a farm advertising dogs for rent, so they inquired and the farmer said he had an excellent dog named Supervisor available. They rented him and he performed flawlessly.

Next year, they went back and asked for Supervisor, but the farmer said that Supervisor had performed so well he had been promoted to Manager, so he was going to be more expensive. They rented Manager anyway and once again he performed flawlessly.

The same thing happened the next year, with Manager being promoted to Vice President. But the following year, when the hunters went back and asked for Vice President, the farmer said with a sad look, “We had to put Vice President down.” “Why?” the hunters asked in surprise. The farmer replied, “Vice President performed so well and was in such great demand that we promoted him to President – and from that point on all he wanted to do was sit on his ass and bark!”

Too Much, Not Enough

A paradox of power is that the people who crave it most make so little effective use of it. They don’t get much done. They don’t delegate responsibility, because they need to control everything. They rarely reward but often criticize. They set very high standards for subordinates but then try to do everything themselves – which is impossible. Workers are often confused and demoralized, and the organization performs poorly.

But another misuse of power is not to accept it. Leaders who do this are more concerned with everyone liking them than with leading. They make too many exceptions to the rules. They don’t understand that wishy-washy leadership actually harms morale more than it boosts it, because people in the organization need fairness and structure in order to do their work with confidence. With no power exerted, confusion abounds and again poor performance results.

So here we are, back in the middle: Effective business leaders possess a high need for power, but it’s directed toward the benefit of the organization. They understand that they have been appointed, not anointed. They know that it’s their followers who have empowered them, not the other way around!

As William Shakespeare told us in Measure for Measure, “Oh! It is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”


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