[Music] There's a very famous research study conducted by two researchers, French and Raven, and it said we essentially have six power bases that we routinely can employ: reward, coercion, legitimate power, expert power, referent power, and informational power. So, reward and coercion, the ability to give and the ability to take, expert power of knowledge, legitimate power bestowed upon you as an entity that has the ability to make decisions that govern others' actions, referent, which is all about power bestowed on you by others, and finally, information power of being able to share insights. When you take a look at legitimate power, much like reward and coercion, you can only get so far if you routinely leverage that in terms of the three major outcomes associated with power. So, you can either resist somebody's use of power, you can comply, or you can commit. Legitimate power typically doesn't bring about commitment. If you routinely employ legitimate power, it can bring about compliance; sometimes, it can bring about resistance. One time, I witnessed something that was very telling when I

was a young officer in the military, and I saw an individual who constantly was bossing people around. He was constantly threatening them with, If you don't do the following, I'm going to make sure that this happens to you. So, very big on using legitimate, very big on using coercion. So, what started to transpire was where people did exactly what he told them to do, but they knew there were countless other things that were implied but weren't specifically stated. And so, they elected only to do the things that were stated and to ignore the things that were implied in service of accomplishing the task. And the individual became more and more upset, and he's like, Well, why didn't you do this, this, and this? And they said, Well, that's not what you told me. And so, it was a clear example of how legitimate and coercion, while efficient, might not lead to effective outcomes. Because individuals have to fill in the blanks with a lot of things in order to bring about successful organizational achievement. If you want to get at

achieving commitment. The two power bases that most lead to that outcome are expert and referent. Expert because people can really see, Hey, this individual has a deep understanding of what is required to be successful, and referent because if an individual opens himself up to another's influence, it's because they have determined, This person will take care of me. [Music]

Leading With Influence The 6 Power Bases

Leading With Influence The 6 Power Bases