The bases of power in leadership is a work of social psychologists Bertram Raven and John French published in 1959. The bases of power by French and Raven categorized the source of power into 5 sources. However, six years later Raven added an “Informational Power” as the 6th power of leadership.
What is Bases of Power
Bases of power in leadership are 5 important sources of power that the leader can have. The 5 bases of power are includes: legitimate power, reward power, coercive power, referent power, and expert power. The leader can use these power to influences people to follow and believe in their order.
- Legitimate Power – the power based on position of leader.
- Reward Power – the ability of leader to influences others people with valued reward.
- Coercive Power – the power to control people with fears and rules.
- Referent Power – the power based on personal attractiveness.
- Expert Power – the power come from leader’s knowledge or expertise in his/her job.
- Informational Power – power when you know some information but others don’t.
The 5 bases of power is one of the most useful tools to understand the sources of leadership power for the organization management. Furthermore, French and Raven’s sources of power can also use as a checklist to identify the power that’s the leader have.
In additional, these 5 bases of power by French and Raven can separate into 2 groups (as an image below), which include personal power and formal power.
All of these bases of power are potentially important because the central to effective leadership management is power, the power is ability to order other people. In organizational management, this influence often means the ability to get things done or accomplish the objective.
Legitimate Power
Legitimate power is a positional power. Legitimate power is a very basic base of power of leadership in organization because legitimate power comes with the leader’s position. The leader with legitimate power has the right or the authority to order their subordinates. For example, a CEO formulate the business direction and assign objects to middle level management.
In contrast, the middle level manager cannot order the CEO which is the top level management, the middle level manager has no legitimate power over the top level management person. To put it simply, the higher level of management the more legitimate power.
Reward Power
Reward power is the ability of the leader to influence others people with valued rewards. People follow the leader’s orders to receive those rewards. For example, a logistics manager try to achieve better transportation accuracy to get a better review and get big bonus from a performance review. The leader who motivates employees with reward power can make employees work more effectively.
Salary hikes, paid leave, annual bonus, extra bonus, extra vacation, and promotion are all examples of reward power.
However, if the organization have a policy to increase the same amount of salary to everyone, reward power will be powerless because people can’t have higher raises, and leader can’t motivate employees’ performance with a salary hike.
Coercive Power
Coercive power in the organization is similar to legitimate power, but it’s controls people by fear. The source of coercive power comes from punishments, so the leader can only punish the lower level manager. For example, a manager punishes employees who are against the organization’s policy.
On the other hand, coercive power can’t use too much because this power can make people dissatisfied. In the worst case, this power can make people leave the organization.
As you might guess, the lower-level managers have less legitimate, coercive, and reward power than middle-level and higher level managers.
Referent Power
The leader with referent power has interpersonal relationships with other people in the organization, people comply the leader with referent power because of admiration or personal liking the manager.
There are many ways to obtain the referent power. For instance, personal style, respectable character, entertain, and other good characteristics. In contrast, the manager who is incompetent, disliked, or less respected will have less referent power.
Expert Power
Expert power is a base of power from the knowledge or expertise of the leader. People follow the leader who has expert power because they believe in the leader’s skills. You might say this is like, knowledge is power.
For instance, a procurement manager his/her employees some negotiation skills to get a better price (and it works). So, these people will respect this manager’s skills. On the other hand, the manager who lacks in expertise or knowledge of their jobs will have less expert power, and may have less respect from their subordinates.
Bases of Power in Conclusion
Bases of power are also known as the 5 sources of power, they are five types of power of the leader in the organization, which includes leader who is in a position that has the right to order others people, the leader who can motivate people with rewards, the leader who has the right to punish people, the leader who are well-liked, and the leader who have expertise or knowledge in his/her job.
- Legitimate Power is the leader who are in a position that has the right to order others people.
- Reward Power is the leader who can reward people to motivate them.
- Coercive Power is the leader who are in a position that has the right to punish people to make them don’t break the rules.
- Referent Power is who are well liked from people in their organization.
- Expert Power is the leader who have knowledge or expertise in his/her job.
- Informational Power is power from you know some information but others don’t.
Although, all of these bases of power are important to any leader in any organization. But the most powerful source of power that really important to lead the organization is formal power which includes; legitimate power, reward power, and coercive power because these bases of power can really control and order people to make thing done.
