Influencing Group Communication
LaTonya Clarkson
BCOM/231
September 21, 2015
Hannah Rosette
There are five bases of power and I will briefly describe those powers. The five powers are coercive, expert, legitimate, referent, and reward. The five powers are broken down into two categories, which are formal and personal.
In my reading I have learned that there are five different types of power bases that we will experience while working. Formal power has the following three powers within it, coercive, legitimate, and reward. Personal power is made up of expert and referent power.
Coercive power has to do with how someone uses their ability to influence others using sanctions, threats or even punishments. Coercive power is helps with making sure employees follow the company policies and procedures. This is an effective power for our supervisors because it controls our behavior for fear of losing our jobs, making sure we meet our deadlines, and get a good rating on our performance reviews by adhering to the policies, and procedures put in place for each team. This power here keeps me in line with my organizations policies, and procedures.
Reward power comes from a person ability to influence how much incentives are in your organization. Reward powers are a great motivator for employees. Reward power is used in my agency when it comes to our bonuses, which are determined by our ratings on our annual and mid-year performance review. Some forms of rewards maybe, promotions, pay raise, or time off awards. Rewards can also have a negative effect for example if the same employee is the only getting the reward all the time then the supervisor maybe being showing some type of favoritism and this can cause problems with their team as other employees make get upset and offended.
The last of the three formal powers is legitimate power which also is a positional power. A positional power in my agency would be “The Chief of The Finance Department”. He has the...