Seven Powerful Ways to Enhance Your Power
Power has a bad reputation because it’s abused. We despise and reject the selfish motivations and methods of managers and leaders who manipulate and coerce people into reluctant compliance.
Power is, however, neither good nor bad. Everyone has it and everyone uses it. Power is the ability to get something done.
The more skillfully you use power the more power you’ll have.
Seven powerful tips that enhance your power:
- The more power you give others the more power you have. Hoarding power eventually destroys it. Skillful leaders create environments where others feel powerful.
- Don’t talk about your power. Powerful people don’t tell others they have power; they display it by doing things.
- Quietly embrace your power to influence, lift, encourage, challenge, reward, be respected, and hold others accountable. Your discomfort with power is your problem; when you get over your discomfort, you’ll be more effective.
- Achieve results through others. Doing things others should do demonstrates lack of leadership-power.
- Speak and act humbly. Humility enhances effectiveness; arrogance hinders it. Powerful people don’t need to intimidate; they frequently lead from the back-seat.
- Focus – your ability to get things done – on developing people. You can do all the things that great leaders do like building trust, inspiring shared vision, creating goals and plans, and rewarding high performance but if you don’t develop others you won’t reach extraordinary success. The only way to succeed without developing others is to hire people that are already developed. But you must immediately begin developing them.
- Let others influence you. Leaders who aren’t influenced by others can’t influence others.
Bonus Tip: Leverage power by spending more time with people who respect you and less time with those who don’t.
How have you become comfortable with your power?
How can leaders enhance their power?
Dan, amazing read. The more you give it away, share it, encourage it, the more of and bigger it gets! Quiet leadership and power through example are “powerful”. Thanks
Deborah,
Thanks for your encouraging comment. May you find, use, and enhance your power.
Best,
Dan
Practical and insightful, I appreciate your daily challenges/reminders/boosts!
Hi Ken, Thank you for taking a moment to encourage me. It’s a great use of power. Cheers, Dan
Dan, enjoyed the read. Better yet, it got me reflecting about my coaching work and my observations about power. While these are not intended as absolutes, I find that people who are busy protecting it (their power), nurturing it, trying to expand it…often don’t. They have authority, but not power. They also tend to try and control/intimidate others into doing what they want. They get compliance, but not commitment.
The healthier use of power is what you describe. They grow and develop others’ strength and influence, thereby multiplying the power that is on a team or organization. Whether it is learned or intuitive, multiplying the ability of others IS the best way to grow our own influence and the effectiveness of our team/organization.
Thanks, Dan.
Jim
Love it, Dan. The more we focus the power we have and wield on helping others and getting them to do the things we know they can do, and the less we focus on ourselves…the more power we have and the more we gain.
If I work to draw the focus and attention to my own strength and greatness, I am diminished by this act. I may view myself as powerful, but others will not.
It is what can be accomplished with and through others that adds to my light.
Great reminders, Dan! Love to begin my day like this
Dan’s posts are always insightful, succinct, and applicabe. I especially appreciated this article on power, which seems misusued as often as it is misunderstood. Truly power is neither good or bad, it just is; how we exercise it is where values and judgement come into play. Understand Dan’s insights here and one’s effectiveness will soar.
I would say becoming comfortable with my own power is a work-in-progress. One thing that has contributed to my maturity in that area is giving credence to the fact that sometimes it is not obvious immediately that your leadership actions are impacting someone powerfully — you may not find out until much later what kind of impact you made. For that reason, it is (as always) to be true to yourself in the “in the moment” decisions you make and words you speak.
Leaders can enhance their power by involving themselves with completely different from their usual people, places, and environments. A teacher friend of mine needs extra income this summer and is choosing to be a bank teller instead of teaching. She says she wants to come back “refreshed” for her students in the fall. Something tells me she will come back “more powerful” too.
Dear Dan,
I have become comfortable with my power by thinking that I know lesser than many. So, there is nothing great about my power. This thinking pushes me forward to work more, focus more and learn more. The more I learn, the more I think, I know less than others. This reduces my arrogance and ego. This encourages humility in me.
Leaders can enhance their power by empowering others and creating more leaders. Leadership is not a position, it is a role that anyone can discharge it. Leadership is about serving, sacrificing and connecting.
Never minimize self!
Great post, Dan!
My favorite bosses have been leaders that seem to have internalized and synthesized all those qualities and characteristics. By empowering their subordinates, the entire organization benefitted. I learned a lot about leadership from their good examples.
To an extent I disagree with #3. I have WAY more respect for leaders (managers, etc) who can demonstrate that they do know how to do the little stuff. Certainly managers shouldn’t do this all the time, but they should on occasion, step in and “help” subordinates. Not by dictating, but by offering to help. This allows the leader to check in on them without appearing judgmental and shows them that you do know what you are doing. You show your subordinates that you know exactly how hard their job is/ isn’t. There are too many people in this world who get promoted because of connections or seniority, not ability; and we in the lower echelon know it. We won’t give you true respect because of your title, you have to show us you deserve it.
amazing!!!!!!! never knew such a cool shortcut to be an effective leader:-)
I agree with Heidi that you have to demonstrate you know first hand what you are talking about by doing the job yourself – but only once! Then, like #3 says, you need to delegate these items to others who can handle them so that you are freed up to get back to a better use of your time and skills on another level, where only you can do that job.
As for #7, IMO, you can listen and hear other’s opinions, but allowing influence makes you like a tree branch swaying in the wind from side to side, being pushed in any direction a new influence wishes to shove you. A real leader must be able to listen and discern, not be influenced.
As for Ajay’s comment about demeaning self to stay humble, well that seems like taking it way too far. If you have an over-inflated ego, perhaps a bit of that might work, but for the majority of leaders, I don’t believe that thinking others know more than we do about our job is the way to make us more effective leaders. One must have confidence in their decision making skills. This has nothing to do with ego. To be a great leader, ego is left at the door – in fact, ego isn’t even part of the equation.
Thanks for the insights, Dan, it gets people thinking and growing, and that’s always a good thing!
amazing…!!!
These are great tips to follow though it is hard to follow in a way that is perceived by the leader. Thanks for quick notes.
Giving is better than receiving – empowering others is better than “powering” yourself !!!
Tip #2 reminded me of this fantastic quote from Francis Bacon:
“Mr. Attorney, I respect you, I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it.”
Great post Dan!