Gaining Power and Influencing Others

Chapter seven examines management theories about interpersonal power and the management skill of influencing others. There are few, if any, places that both involve people and are apolitical. For all practical purposes, we pursue our careers in a workplace that is characterized by unequal distributions of power, different agendas, and efforts by people to get their way. The interpersonal concept of power describes one’s relative potential to influence another, or in other words, the capacity to get them to do what you want them to do. Power comes from many different places and can be used to a greater or lesser degree. When used in accordance with official channels and formal organizational rules it is called authority. When used informally to supplement or bypass these arrangements then it is called politics. For better or worse, Machiavelli’s ancient aphorisms about the importance of power continue to play out today from Main Street to Wall Street. Put simply, it is hard to get anything done without the necessary clout and the skills to use it well. A stark fact of the business world is that managers who get ahead are not necessarily the most knowledgeable but instead are often those most adept at leveraging their power bases and playing the political game. Therefore in this seventh chapter we look at how one can better use power and influence people.