Dear Consultant,

I’ve recently been told that I have the opportunity to lead a team of five people within my company.  I would like to progress my career in this direction but I’ve never done it before and I wonder if I have what it takes to be a leader?

Leadership is something that we think we understand, until someone asks us to define it.  Usually we think it has something to do with power over others, whether that is the ability influence a team based on positional authority or simply because the team wants to make you happy. 

There is also leadership that is unrelated to positional power within an organization; it can emerge within teams either as an individual who takes control, or as an idea that takes off within a group or organization.  I once wrote a paper and found over 212 different definitions of the word.

I think though, in your circumstance it is helpful to think about leadership in terms of power and influence.  Those aren’t dirty words by the way, in many cases it is your ability to influence others that differentiates “leadership” from “management”.

Let’s think about the different ways that you may be able to influence team members and then you can do a self-check to see how you feel like they may apply to you in your situation.  There are five “power relationships” that are commonly agreed to exist, based on a seminal leadership paper by French and Ravens (1959).  Those power relationships are: 

1)      Referent Power – describes leaders who have the potential to influence followers because followers identify with, and like the leader.  They do things for the leader because they want to help you. 

2)      Expert Power – increases as followers perceive a leader to be competent at a particular task, so they believe that the leader knows what they are talking about and will take their advice. 

3)      Legitimate power – refers to the influence associated with a formal position within an organization.  This is also frequently known as positional power and can be given to anyone who is promoted to a position of leadership.  You’re the boss, so people do what you say. 

4)      Reward power – comes from the ability to provide rewards for followers.  Pay raises, bonuses, time-off, etc. 

5)      Coercive power – is the ability to influence by punishing or penalizing followers in the form of reprimands, demotions, firing, etc. 

Organizations are not democracies, but people vote with their actions.

Simply by being in a position of authority within a team in a traditional organization, you’ll gain the last three power relationships, the tricky ones are the first two.  Remember that organizations are not typically democracies, so followers may say that they will do what you ask of them, but they may “vote” with their actions by dragging their feet or actively defying your wishes. It is for that reason that it is important to convince, rather than order followers to do tasks.  With respect to expert power, you may ask yourself; do I have the subject matter knowledge to lead the team?  If not, do you need it or can you rely on your team for that subject matter knowledge?

Followers are going to want to logically understand the rationale for doing a particular action so that will frequently require subject matter knowledge to justify these actions.  Referent power is the aspect of leadership that most interests leadership researchers and practitioners. To assess your potential for referent power, think about whether or not you already have a working relationship with this team?  If not, how can you create a strong personal relationship to encourage a connection that may help team members have an intrinsic desire to do good work and to help you on a personal level.  Sometimes this is a matter of building mutual respect and friendship.

Leadership is a deeply complex issue, but in a traditional team context, if you’re able to call on all of the types of influence listed above at appropriate times during the work day, then you have the basic recipe for providing good leadership.