What happens to followership when power and influence are being presented from two different angles, with differing values and common goals? Both sources of leadership offer benefits and meaning to the followership in different ways. Both leaders want to influence the same group of people and leaders can potentially influence follower behaviors and attitudes (Hughes, 1993). When this influence arrives upon the same followership from two leaders within the same organizational setting, who both have substantial impacts on a member’s livelihood, it can create confusion and conflict among the group. Whose side are you on? An examination on influence and how it relates to followership behaviors may be able to help navigate this complex leadership situation. An examination of various concepts may help build a strategy for each leadership as they compete for influence. The struggle for influence could result in confusion and contention among the followership. It is important for leaders in this situation to understand how to achieve their own personal goals while respecting each other’s roles in the group.
At my job, a small local police department, we have two entities of power and influence. Leadership, at its core, is ability to communicate with the group to achieve a common goal (Northouse, 2019). One leadership entity is our boss, our police chief. The police chief is an assigned leader who has an ability to influence through a position of authority. An assigned leader in one who is given a leadership position before they have proven to, or been identified by, the group that they are an effective leader (Northouse, 2019). He has the legitimate power upon which to build his leadership, as legitimate power roles are not always necessarily viewed to be effective leaders (Hughes, 1993). The other entity is our collective bargaining agreement, the Police Benevolent Association (the PBA). The president and the board are elected by the body of members, and thus are emergent leaders. These emergent leaders were identified by the group, while not in a position of authority, as members who have leadership potential (Northouse, 2019). These leaders function through expert power, in that they are highly trusted to have the knowledge to navigate the many functions of the PBA, most importantly, our working contract. Hughes (1993) advises that leaders who influence through expert power are depended on for their skill and judgement despite possibly having no true authority over the members. While our Chief has the ability to elevate our career path and give special assignments, the PBA makes decisions that affect our everyday livelihood such as our income, our PTO and our benefits. These two things are arguably equally important. Working under this dynamic where two leaders are continuously applying influence over the group, but who also sometimes have opposing goals, creates a unique challenge. The police chief must work that much harder to be an effective leader when the PBA leadership maintains some control and limits the police chief’s power. The PBA provides the followership the opportunity to resist the chief’s influence (Hughes, 1993), but the chief also has the ability to apply various leadership styles, such as reward power, to enhance their leader-member exchange. Reward power covers a leader’s ability to elevate a member’s career through promotions, special assignments and resources (Hughes, 1993).
Are the chief’s influence tactics executed well enough that he is building strong enough relationships to combat the safe space of the PBA? Until recently, this wasn’t the case. The members of the police department overwhelmingly staked their faith in the PBA protections and echoed the criticisms of our former chief. Our former chief presented a leadership style that was complacent and detached. While effective influence is displayed through group cohesiveness and motivation (Hughes, 1993) during his years with the department morale was plummeting and people mostly scoffed at doing anything but the bare minimum. Rather than develop a relationship with the former chief, people appeared to walk on eggshells around him. He did not involve himself in major incidents, stuck primarily to administrative duties and only seemed to appear when there was a disciplinary issue to attend to. According to Hughes (1993) an absence during a crisis can negatively affect a follower’s perception of influence from a leader. Because of his position and experience, our former chief got by on legitimate and coercive power alone. He actually verbally criticized any use of reward power, stating that we should just do our job without expecting any recognition in return. The chief’s legitimate power over us, to order compliance and uphold procedural rules was one that was removed from a leadership attempt (Hughes, 1993). Our old chief built a reputation for being punishment happy, using cohesive power too frivolously as a means to keep people in line. This lack of positive influence left us in an impoverished management situation. Our chief was going through the motions but was ultimately withdrawn and uninvolved (Northouse, 2019).
Because of this experience, naturally the group gravitated towards their other option for influence, the PBA. The PBA meetings provided an outlet for frustrations in the workplace and the board was open to addressing any concerns if they held any power to effect change on that particular issue. The PBA holds the power to file grievances and often did so when serious punishment was issued by the chief and command staff. They invited opportunities to file grievances. One particular serious incident where an officer was eventually fired was drawn out through legal proceedings for over a year before it was concluded. Because of the impoverished nature of our chief’s management style, the body of the PBA was happy to support these endeavors, which were funded through our collective dues. According to Hughes (1993) leaders who apply reward and punishment have good influence, but the potential to influence can be hindered by an active union. Because we were just seeing punishment, the PBA was easily given even more room to influence members over the Chief. The board won over members with their expert power and used this situation to build their referent power. They were trusted with their knowledge and understanding of patrol function issues and they spent a considerable amount of time learning how to effectively negotiate a working contract. Even though our board members are also part of the followership in the workplace, they possessed this expert knowledge that directly benefits the members of the group. Thus they became board members as followers who have more expert power than our leader (Hughes, 1993). The PBA combats their limitations of legitimate power at work by building interpersonal relationships with the body. They apply referent power by taking on the extra effort to fight for our benefits. Because they do not have to be concerned about discipline, they are free to develop interpersonal relationships without worrying about being reluctant to discipline (Hughes, 1993). According to the leader-member exchange theory, interpersonal relationships can create a positive dyadic relationship. These relationships can result in greater organizational commitment, better attitudes and greater participation (Northouse, 2019). Additionally, Northouse (2019) suggests that interpersonal relationships between the group and the leader empower the group. The PBA certainly empowers its members with protections so that they feel safe to stand up to the Chief. Interestingly, LMX mentions that good leader relationships can compensate for the drawbacks of not feeling empowered. Though we are considering two different leaders for the same group, where one leader is failing at empowering, the PBA is creating the atmosphere of empowerment and good relationships to make up for it. Considering the dynamic of the two leadership situations at this time, the PBA was giving and receiving a high amount of support for their efforts, and the Chief was not altering his style in a way that could effectively build more support for his leadership. This reflected in the group’s overall attitudes towards the chief, and he was heavily criticized until he left the agency.
Our new chief has been with us for several months now and I am noticing his efforts to, either inadvertently or on purpose, confront this problem of leadership and influence. This chief’s leadership style approach is near opposite and I am noticing the behaviors that he is taking to ‘win over’ influence of the group. This chief, unlike the last, does seem motivated to use his legitimate power to influence the group and does not appear to be resistant to the groups influence over the leader (Hughes, 1993). So far he has projected a matter-of-fact understanding of the efforts of the PBA. He seems to communicate not distain for, but respect for their efforts as he works to understand our contract. Even though our chief is in a challenging position to support our group, but also act as a liaison for the township’s demands (which isn’t always received well by us, an example of this is the rotating shift push that I discussed in previous post), he is making efforts to tailor his leadership style to combat that setback. The first most noticeable change I saw when our chief started was that he implemented reward power into his leadership style almost immediately. He rewards in the only way he can where he isn’t limited by bureaucracy. Therefore, his rewards are intrinsic, providing the member with a feeling of accomplishment (Hughes, 1993). He does this by sending out group-wide emails to notify when an officer receives a verbal, email or letter commendation from a citizen. He then responds to the positive praise by sending a thank-you letter back to the citizen. He then posts a copy of his letter on our big bulletin board and puts another copy into our personnel file. This is intrinsic, as it allows the officer to see how their everyday work is leaving an impact on someone. Conducting recognition in this way avoids the possible downsides of extrinsic rewards, such as decreasing the motivation to work hard simply for the satisfaction of accomplishment (Hughes, 1993).
Our chief also has displayed efforts into building interpersonal relationships. It is too early to tell if these relationships will become an in-group and out-group situation, however these relationships may develop organically. Some LMX research suggests that a leader should try to build in-group style relationships with all of their followers, however some folks are simply not interested in performing beyond their job description and are more interested in building relationships under their social identity outside of work (Northouse, 2019). When our chief was hired, he spent the first several weeks having one-on-one meetings with us, to get to know about our personal lives, our career goals and any work concerns we might have. It seems as though that the chief is working through the LMX phases of relationship building, where the last chief was mostly uninterested in us. He is currently in phase 2, the acquaintance phase. While at first he fulfilled his duties as chief, performing under hierarchical status in phase 1, now he is showing himself to be approachable with concerns, agreeable to special training requests and he spends much of his morning catching up with members of the group (Northouse, 2019). He always asks me how my days off went, and recently he allowed me to juggle my work hours so that I could attend a training class that I really wanted to take, because he knew that it pertained specifically to my long-term career goals.
I believe, given the evidence of his behaviors so far, that our Chief is working towards a comfortable middle of the road management style of leadership. This works best for his position, as he has to address task concerns as a representative to the township, but he also is putting an emphasis on the people (Northouse, 2019). He attempts to be accommodating but he is firm when his answer is unfavorable. He has not engaged in any sort of conflict and attempts to be fair to both the township’s demands and the needs of the group. I have not yet experienced him in a situation where he would have to adapt his leadership style situationally.
So what does this mean for the PBA? If our chief is successful in creating a vast in-group of interpersonal relationships with the members, they may be more reluctant to support the PBA through employment grievances. Members may be more hesitant to address any criticisms about the chief. According to LMX, an effective leader can create a relationship where there is an exchange of trust, respect and obligation (Northouse, 2019). With this quality of a relationship, members put more trust in the chief’s decisions. Perhaps, if the officer who was fired was disciplined under this chief’s oversight, the PBA body would respect his judgement and decision rather than use a large amount of PBA legal fees to attempt to save the man’s job. The PBA could lose this influence over the body and they may find that negative opinions about the workplace are met with backlash. While our chief will always be limited in what he can do due to our contract, he can successfully maintain influence over our actions in other ways. This is not really a power struggle, as the two’s individual powers are defined. Power and influence are related, but are not necessarily connected (Hughes, 1993). It is an influence struggle, and the chief is using the powers that he does have to increase his influence every day. His successful influence could award him more control over his followers’ behaviors and attitudes (Hughes, 1993), making them more agreeable to his efforts. It will be interesting to see how, from a leadership theory perspective, this dynamic will change over the next few years.
References:
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (1993). Chapter 5: Power and Influence. In Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience. Irwin.
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (Eighth Edition). SAGE Publications.
Carie Fuller says
Hi Amanda,
What a highly relevant and insightful blog post. You touched on several key aspects of leadership and workplace relations: power, influence, and the individual relationships between organizational members, particularly those relationship between leader and follower. As you noted, there are at least two perspectives / approaches (Power & Influence and LMX) that are applicable to this scenario. I liked the phrase you used, “influence struggle,” as opposed to the one more commonly used, “power struggle,” as it more accurately describes where that tension lies. Influence, according to Hughes et al. (1993) is the “actual change in the targets attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors” (p. 108) whereas power refers only to the capacity to produce those changes. Your former Chief and the PBA were not having a conflict over how much capacity each could garner, but rather, how much actual change could come as the result of their words and actions. Breaking those concepts down really does make it more clear on what types of actions are available to each side. For example, your former Chief already had the power to become more invested in people and daily operations, but he chose to leave that power unused. Had he used it, he could have been more influential in the choices people made. The PBA, on the other hand, might have been limited in legitimate power, but they more fully used their resources, and in comparison, were significantly more influential.
I thought it might also be interesting to also look at the situation at more depth through the lens of the Behavioral approach, as a means to evaluate your leader’s people-oriented actions (Northouse, 2019). As you stated, your new Chief is successfully creating personal relationships with organizational members and has expressed his respect for the PBA. It is through his relationship (or consideration) behaviors that he is successfully building camaraderie, trust, and respect with others in the department. As a result, his cooperative behaviors have actually reduced the realized influence of the PBA because the imbalance that once existed with the previous Chief is now less severe. While you do not say it specifically, I imagine the new Chief is also successfully performing the necessary task-related (or initiating structure) behaviors to keep the department running smoothly. You did mention that he has leveraged his power to provide rewards through recognition (something the former Chief avoided), and it sounds like that has been an effective strategy for motivating people to complete their tasks and responsibilities.
You had mentioned that under the previous Chief there was an impoverished management style and that the new Chief is now headed towards a middle-of-the-road style. These styles are part of the Blake and Mouton’s Managerial grid, which is included in the behavioral approach (Northouse, 2019). The old Chief’s disengaged style had the lowest concern for people as well as the lowest concern for tasks (which makes it very easy to understand why he was so ineffective), while the new Chief’s style is shaping up to have an optimal balance of recognizing people’s needs while also making sure organizational tasks are completed. As the text suggests, it does seem as though he has boosted morale without going overboard and disregarding the work itself. According to Northouse (2019), middle-of-the-road leaders are often associated with playing down disagreements and putting aside personal convictions for the sake of the group’s progress. This is what I found to be salient about the new PBA-Chief relations.
Whereas the PBA once had a lot of “teeth” in the conflict with the former Chief, the new Chief is unlikely to give them as much of a fight. It sounds like his priority is on getting the department to run smoothly, even if that means he might have to give a little on how he believes things should be. You are probably right, in that the PBA may see less support of grievances or complaints against him, but their role remains critical. The collective bargaining objectives for contract terms and a process for conflict mediation lie outside of his powers, and for good reason. For everyone’s sake, I hope he continues to be supportive, but if or when that ever changes, you have the benefit of a unified voice through the PBA to continue to serve as a checks-and-balances structure, which as Padilla et al. (2007) argue, is necessary to prevent an environment from being conducive to destructive leadership.
References
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (1993). Chapter 5: Power and Influence. In Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience. Irwin.
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (Eighth Edition). SAGE Publications.
Padilla, A., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 176–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.03.001