Question

Think of two situations from your personal or work activities when you needed to influence someone to do something but you did not possess legitimate power. For each of these situations: Fully describe the situation in detail. Using the theory of the course, describe the source of power that you used to influence the other person. Note: each situation described should use a different source – that is, do not use the same source for both situations. You need to think of two situations and you have to use different sources of power in two different situations.

Using the theory of the course, describe the influencing method that you used. Indicate how the source of power contributed to the ability to influence.

Answer 1

Any power that comes from the organizational role or position for someone. For example, a boss can assign projects, a policeman can arrest a citizen, and a teacher assigns grades.

Having power or using power are two different things. In corporate world people are using their powers to achieve their goals or plans if its a matter of doing it right or wrong no one cares about this.Suppose you are a manager and you have the power to promote a person or fired a person then in some cases people with high gratitude or honesty will choose the right things who deserve it however the other one will not think of it.

Example : Legitimate power : I started a startup business and i was a manager of that organization so i used Legitimate power to rule this scenario. It a kind of power where you can mark a deadline for employees and without showing powers you can easily get the task done.

So there is a project we get from one of the renowned client and there was very less time to complete the task and employees are not listening up properly so by taking legitimate power i  set deadlines and employees comply even if they think the deadlines were overly ambitious. Start-up organizations have limited things so we can influence individuals to work long hours week after week in order to help the company survive and this how i made the project successfull without any interuption.Without using any power or making any pressure goals can be achieved without any use ofd power or dominantly overrule on employees.

Example 2 : In personal term also there are various things where you need to complete the things rigrously.Referent power stems from the personal characteristics of the person such as the degree to which we like, respect, and want to be like them. Referent power is often called charisma—the ability to attract others, win their admiration, and hold them spellbound.

It is a type of power used for someone who is close to you and achieve any goal we used to follow it.

There is an example of my life, i love my sister alot and she is a very confident girl but somehow she looses her confidence and does not do anything. So i asked her to do something in her life but she never listens to me so i used referent power to over rule this. I set a goal in front of her to get a job for her or else i will stop talking to her.So in fear of loosing she worked hard and she achieved the goal and in this way i did not make pressure or use my power it just said i motivates her to set the goal and achieve it.