Could leadership exist without power?

The success of any organisation is the result of a combination of factors: financial, material and technological resources, logistics, human capital etc. These factors are very important and they need to be put together to achieve the desired goals consistent with the corporate vision and mission.

By Chanchala Perera

In this context, firms are in constant search of the best individuals who will lead and carry out this journey to success. These individuals are expected to have special characteristics that ensure that their actions will turn out into positive results for the organisation. These extraordinary individuals can be called ‘leaders.’

Leadership means going ahead or showing the way. There are various types and levels of leadership, but all have in common a relationship with followers. Many leadership skills such as creating a vision, communicating it, attracting and choosing able people, delegating, and forming partnerships depend upon power. This article will present a discussion on Leadership and Power and examine — as most people believe — whether the leadership and power are inextricably intertwined.  

Power obviously is an inclusive reality in the life process of all modern-day organisations. Leaders regularly acquire and use power to accomplish specific work goals and to strengthen their own positions vis-à-vis the reading of general or organisational goals. It is possible to see every interaction and every social relationship in an organisation as involving an exercise of power. Leadership is the ability to get men to do what they don’t want to do.  

In short, the core problem for leaders in any organisation involves getting others to do what is required to accomplish the organisation’s goals. There are a number of reasons to explain why leaders pursue power and view it as an important part of their work.  

Leadership and power can be viewed from different angles. Firstly, how a leader generates power among others and how it influences to create leadership. Secondly, how the hard power and soft power of leaders are used to influence leadership through their subordinates’ hierarchy of needs and motives and finally, how information revolution creates power towards the leadership today?   

The most important quality of leadership is character. The leader’s character is power. A leader has the ability to translate his vision or mission as well as the organisation’s vision or mission into reality. Most of the time the influence of power may lead towards a good leadership. A leader’s power generation is a process. Most of the people say that the leader uses his power towards his leadership. But what we try to highlight is that the leader by himself most of the time does not create any power by himself, and others may believe that the way he behaves and the way he acts, as ‘power.’

A leader has to have a commitment. Most of the time he sacrifices his life towards the betterment of others. Throughout his journey he has to carry out many commitments.  It’s a life time journey.

Most of the time, commitment comes due to failures. For example, if the great inventor Thomas A. Edison had not tried out his experiments 9999 times due to ‘failures’ the concept of the Bulb would have become a dream. But finally, through his failures he achieved what he wanted. People like Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other great leaders had to face many failures at the beginning as well as throughout their journey. But most of them used their failures as a power towards their leadership and they used it very intelligently.

Leaders are learners. They hunger for learning. Most of the time they try to see new things and try to find new opportunities. They have more knowledge than others and they try to look for new opportunities — opportunities that others cannot see.  

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezons’ business concept of Amazon can be considered as one of the best examples of looking for new opportunities. Until he started the web based business through Amazon, nobody ever thought that it would grow very fast and make profits over profits.

New opportunities occur due to one’s eagerness for success. An enthusiastic attitude creates more opportunities due to which ‘involvement’ occurs. Involvement emphasises how to cope with different hard situations as well as simple situations. Furthermore a leader guides his team members towards achievement of goals. Not only that.  He tries to create a successor every time. This emphasises a good characteristic of a charismatic leadership as well as a level five leadership.

Thus characteristics such as a leader’s commitment, his failures, opportunities to learn new things, enthusiasm, involvement etc., create a trust among his team members and create a dependency on the leader. As per findings most of the times a leader may not use the power that he has already with himself. Others may consider it as the leader’s way of behaviour, and the aforesaid characteristics as a leader’s power; and those characteristics create a dependency and trust between the leader and his team.  

Leaders today work in socially complex organisations where they need the assistance of not only subordinates but also peers, superiors, and external parties to accomplish their goals. The quality of the leadership within a company helps meet the expectations of investors, customers and employees, and sets the stage for growth. In order to acquire this assistance effectively leaders need power. As we mentioned, it is important to see how the hard power and soft power leaders use to influence leadership through their subordinate’s hierarchy of needs and motives.

Smart executives know that leadership is not just a matter of issuing commands, but also involves leading by example and attracting others to do what you want.  If a leader can get you to do what he wants, then he does not have to use inducements or threats to make you do it. The indirect way to get what you want has sometimes been called the second face of power — what we call as soft power.

Everyone is familiar with hard power. Hard power can rest on inducements or threats. The soft power, reinforce, interfere with each other, getting others to want the outcomes that you want dissuades people rather than persuade them.

In the real world people’s motives are mixed. According to the theories of motivation it directs towards the achievement of individual or organisational goals. Power and leadership concepts, we can relate with the motivation theories as well. Because the leader’s ability to get things done from other people depends on to what extent the leader can motivate his followers towards the achievement.  According to the Maslow, people’s hierarchy of needs depend on their basic need, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and self actualisation needs etc. We identified that the leader uses the subordinates, peers, superiors, and external parties’ hierarchy of needs to create power towards himself.

For example, the key persons in the organisations such as Top Managers, CEO, CFO etc., most of the time look for their esteem need as well as self-actualisation needs. Leaders use their need towards their power. It is the same for the employees who work in the apparel industry. The leader or the line manager uses the employee’s basic need, safety needs and social need towards achievement of organisational goals. The leader by acting and by showing the path to progress tries to make his dreams a reality.

Herzberg’s two-factor theory also gives more evidence to support the aforesaid points. Most of the time hygiene factors such as salary, work condition, status, supervision which we can consider as creating dissatisfaction do not create much impact on power.

But motivation factors such as achievement, recognition, advancement and growth create more impact on the power of a leader. Because a leader uses those motivators to motivate others and through that the leader is trying to make a bond between his followers and himself. McClelland’s theory of needs also reflects the above concept. As a whole, the leader by translating his followers’ needs and motives towards achievement of goals and his ability to turn impossible things into possible things.

For example, Amazon’s CEO Jeff  Bezons mentioned at the very beginning of the interview he had with HBR  (Oct.  2007)  that he was the one and only strategic planner for Amazon; but now it is done by the group called the “s” team. This term implies the senior team. Through that, Jeff as a leader implies that leadership is not merely the power but actually means to develop successors for the next generation and use the follower’s ambitions, needs and motives as his power and through it tries to create a dependency on him.

Another good example is Apple’s CEO Steve Job. He was named “The CEO of the decade” by fortune Magazine, 2009. On his return to Apple Incorporates in 1997, he made a remarkable point in Apple’s history as well as revolutionary turning point of the ICT industry. Steve’s leadership directed Apple into a new era and it made Apple to become one of the 50 Best Global Brands (2010) named by the Interbrand with the highest positive percentage change (+ %) in brand value among the other 50 Best Global Brands in 2010.   

Information revolution also creates power towards the leadership. Nowadays the important aspect of leadership is information availability. Information creates virtual communities and networks and therefore the world becomes a small village. How you grab the correct and relevant information, how you analyse it and how you create strategies based on that to create effective strategies for correct decision-making is very important.

The United States President’s decision on attack Iraq, Osama Bin Laden’s attack to WTC on 09/11, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership towards war against LTTE  2009 are examples.

Every leader should have the ability for better decision making and the sources of information derives him to be more powerful. That is why most of the people in the world believe that as a country the United States is more powerful and the US President as a person powerful and vigilant. Due to availability of information on Asian countries such as India, China and Japan becoming more powerful than other countries in the world nowadays USA is focusing more on  capturing Asian markets.  Therefore when considering all these facts with regard to the affiliation of leadership with power it is certain that leaders cannot exist without power within the organisation. The degree of power that a leader requires is determined by the goals that he or she must achieve.

Thus power is the possession of control, authority, and/or influence over others. This power is used to achieve a goal. Though it is often said that today we are living in a highly competitive, complicated world, nothing has really changed when it comes to a man’s personal decision to act in a particular manner.

Power has always been a key element of leadership and the leadership and power are inextricably intertwined. The power to attract, to get others to want what you want, to frame the issues, to set the agenda, has its roots in thousands of years of human experience.



(Chanchala Perera – BSc HRM – Special, MBA – Marketing, Dip. in Work Psychology.)