Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Using the five sources of your power at work


1.Personal power is all about your charisma, your passion to achieve the strength of your convictions, your ability to communicate and inspire, and your leadership skills.

  2.Rela-tionship power derives from the network of contacts and friends that you make, develop, and maintain at work; from coworkers who keep you up to date with the goings-on in their part of the organization, to executives who seek you out for special projects--and everyone in between.

  3.Position power is directly related to where you reside on your company's organizational chart. Owners, presidents, and CEOs have plenty of position power, while receptionists, clerks, and laborers typically have little or none.

  4. Knowledge power is based on the special expertise and knowledge that you have of your job, your departments, or your organization.

  5.Task power is inherent in the jobs you are assigned at work. Some work is by nature more important to the health of the organization than others. For example, salespeople, whose job is to bring in money by selling its products or services, usually have high task power.

  You can leverage any source of power you have to build your base of power in another source.