BASES OF POWER JOHN R.P. FRENCH & BERTRAM RAVEN

Spider-man's uncle once said, "Peter with great power comes great responsibility."

And in this video we're going to look at French and Raven's Power Bases, the forms

of power. And as we look at this I don't just want to make it academic. I want to

make it real world. So ask yourself as we talk about these, where do I see myself

WHERE DO I SEE MYSELF IN THE FORMS OF POWER?

in each of these forms of power in my professional role? So let's get into the details.

Hello again friends. Alex Lyon here and this channel, Communication

Coach, is here to help people like you, rising leaders, to help you increase your

own personal leadership impact to bring up the people around you. And today's

topic is power, French and Raven's original five power bases and then at

the end we're going to talk about this sixth power base that they added a

couple years later in the 1960s. This is really old research but I think you'll

be surprised at how applicable it is to your current position. So the first form

of power is legitimate power this is where you are hired, elected, or appointed

LEGITIMATE POWER

to a particular position that comes with responsibilities, legitimate

responsibilities. So let's say you're a frontline supervisor you're probably

going to at some point make people's schedule. That's your legitimate

responsibility. It's tied to your position. And clearly you don't want to

overuse this legitimate power and lord it over everybody. Like Peter Parker's [uncle] says

with power comes responsibility. The next form of power is reward power.

REWARD POWER

And this is pretty expansive. If you're ever in a spot where you can reward

somebody with money, with free time, with praise like a pat on the back, hey good

job. That's a reward that people like and that has an influence over them because

we want to work hard for rewards. I'm a a middle-aged man and I still like a pat

on the back if someone says a job well done that's a reward for me. The flip

side of this is the third form of power which is coercive power and this is

COERCIVE POWER

another one you don't necessarily want to over use. This is the power to punish

or potentially punish. So in other words if people know that you

hypothetically punish them then you still have coercive power so you don't

have to use this to have the form of power. So I teach college and everybody

knows that the teacher has the power over the grade and so in my position I

currently have coercive power although I don't mention that. I don't push that on

people but everybody knows that the boss can fire you that the teacher can give

you a bad grade if that's the great that you earn and so forth.

The next form of power is referent power and this is really the power of

likeability. If you have an influence over people because you have charisma

you have a good relationship with them they look up to you,

that's referent power. And whenever I talk about referent power in my classes

people mention people like Oprah Winfrey. She's not my boss she's probably not

your boss but she has a lot of influence over people. She recommends books and

REFERENT POWER

then people read them they become bestsellers. She gives advice and people

take it she has a lot of referent power and this is one that is wonderful to

cultivate and use and you can't do too much of it because it's not like

legitimate power or coercive power. It's a kind of power where people want to follow

you. And the fifth of the original five power bases is expert power. If you have

EXPERT POWER

a really high level of education let's say you're a physician or a lawyer or

professor or some kind of expert engineer then you have expertise. And a

lot of times people will look to you to bring in that expertise to influence a

decision, to figure out the way forward that's going to help and create the most

benefit. So that's an expert power that you bring to the table to influence

things. And I've seen entire groups get swayed by one expert because that expert

knew more than everybody else. so those are the original five and the sixth

power for more power base is a little controversial this is called

INFORMATIONAL POWER

informational power. First of all, it's not tied to you as a person it's the

power of the information. So let's say you have information that you provide

to somebody, that might influence that decision or a future decision because

they've been swayed by it. they've been persuaded sometimes we're persuaded by

evidence by information. I say it's a little controversial because if you

think about it if you're in a professional setting and you have

information because you're in that organization, that information

doesn't really belong to you personally. And so you want to be very cautious not

to use that information as a commodity as a way to make yourself more powerful.

Information in organizations should be shared widely if it's the kind of

information that people would benefit from then it should be shared widely. You

shouldn't hold on to it and I've seen people do this they use it like it's

money to buy and sell and trade to enhance their own position of power. The

other way that this is a little different from the others is it's not

connected to you personally. So reward power legitimate power those are

connected to you and your position personally but informational power is

not. So, in other words, if you give someone information then they have that

information you don't have it anymore so now that information is shared it's

somewhere else. In fact, you might even give them information and they don't even know it

came from you. So in its nature, this one's a little different from the other

five and that's probably why they added it later. It is, however, very important to

put on the list. So like I said question of the day where do you see yourself in

this list? I would love to hear the kinds of power that you see tied to you in

your professional role and I'd love to hear that in that section below. So

thanks. God bless. And I will see you in the next video.