PTO summary power failure in management circuits
Power Failure in Management Circuits
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Power is America’s last dirty word. It is easier to talk about money and much easier to talk about sex than it is to talk about power. People who have it deny it; people who want it do not want to appear to hunger for it; and people who engage in its machinations do so secretly.
Yet, because it turns out to be a critical element in effective managerial behavior, power should come out from undercover. Having searched for years for those styles or skills that would identify capable organization leaders, many analysts, like me, are rejecting individual traits or situational appropriateness as key and finding the sources of a leader’s real power.
Access to resources and information and the ability to act quickly make it possible to accomplish more and to pass on more resources and information to subordinates. For this reason, people tend to prefer bosses with “clout”. When employees perceive their manager as influential upward and outward, their status is enhanced by association and they generally have high morale and feel less critical or resistant to their boss. More powerful leaders are also more likely to delegate (they are too busy to do it all themselves), to reward talent, and to build a team that places subordinates in significant positions.
Powerlessness, in contrast, tends to breed bossiness rather than true leadership. In large organizations, at least, it is powerlessness that often creates ineffective, desultory management and petty, dictatorial, rules minded managerial styles. Accountability without power responsibility for results without the resources to get them creates frustration and failure. People who see themselves as week and powerless and find their subordinates resisting or discounting them tend to use more punishing forms of influence. If organizational power can “ennoble”, then, recent research shows, organizational powerlessness can (with apologies to Lord Acton) “corrupt.”
So
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Power is America’s last dirty word. It is easier to talk about money and much easier to talk about sex than it is to talk about power. People who have it deny it; people who want it do not want to appear to hunger for it; and people who engage in its machinations do so secretly.
Yet, because it turns out to be a critical element in effective managerial behavior, power should come out from undercover. Having searched for years for those styles or skills that would identify capable organization leaders, many analysts, like me, are rejecting individual traits or situational appropriateness as key and finding the sources of a leader’s real power.
Access to resources and information and the ability to act quickly make it possible to accomplish more and to pass on more resources and information to subordinates. For this reason, people tend to prefer bosses with “clout”. When employees perceive their manager as influential upward and outward, their status is enhanced by association and they generally have high morale and feel less critical or resistant to their boss. More powerful leaders are also more likely to delegate (they are too busy to do it all themselves), to reward talent, and to build a team that places subordinates in significant positions.
Powerlessness, in contrast, tends to breed bossiness rather than true leadership. In large organizations, at least, it is powerlessness that often creates ineffective, desultory management and petty, dictatorial, rules minded managerial styles. Accountability without power responsibility for results without the resources to get them creates frustration and failure. People who see themselves as week and powerless and find their subordinates resisting or discounting them tend to use more punishing forms of influence. If organizational power can “ennoble”, then, recent research shows, organizational powerlessness can (with apologies to Lord Acton) “corrupt.”
So