Situational Leadership, Perception, and the Impact of Power

The article talks about the integration of power with situational leadership. Leadership is
defined as the process of influencing the activities of an individual or a group in efforts
towards goal accomplishment. Power on the other hand is the leader’s influence potential i.e.
the resources that enables a leader to induce compliance or influence followers. Hence, a
leader can’t automatically influence people, he must use his powers to do so. This integral
relationship makes leadership and power inseparable. Seven important power bases that have
potential of influencing the behavior of others are:
1. Coercive power: Based on fear. If a person is unable to fulfil or accomplish, it’ll lead
to punishment and under this style, a leader with high coercive power is seen as
inducing and wanting compliance.
2. Connection power: Leaders with high connections with influential people induce
compliance from others to try to gain favor or avoid disfavor of the connections
3. Expert power: Leader with this quality possesses the expertise to facilitate work
behaviors of others. This leads to compliance with the leader’s wishes.
4. Legitimate power: Based on position held. Induces compliance because it is felt that
this person has power and position to expect so.
5. Referent power: Based on personal traits. Like and admired and others wish to be
associated with him.
6. Reward power: Followers believe that compliance will lead to rewards.
7. Information power: Information availability that is important to others.
Studies have been carried out to find relation between leader’s power base and followers’
performance and it has been found that it is affected by the situational variables also. The
most appropriate power style depends on the situations.

High correlation between the level of maturity and the type of power bases that has a high
chance of gaining compliance. Maturity is a task specific concept and depends on what leader
wants to accomplish. Willingness refers to a person’s motivation and the one who is
motivated is involved in the task and considers himself capable to perform it. As people
mature, their competence and confidence increase. Power bases has significant impact on
behavior of people.
Situational leadership provides basis to understand the impact of each power base. The
maturity of followers decides the style of leadership and the power base to be used by the
leader.

The four styles i.e. telling, selling, participating and delegating are a combination of task
behavior and relationship behavior.
Task behavior: leader’s directions- What, when, where, how to perform
Relationship behavior: Two-way communication (support)
Telling: For low maturity. Clear and specific directions followed by supervision. High task
low relationship behavior.
Selling: For low to moderate maturity. Willing but unable to take up responsibility. Need
direction and support. High task high relationship behavior.
Participating: Moderate to high maturity. Ability but lack self-confidence. Leader is
facilitator. High relationship low task behavior.
Delegating: High maturity. Both ability and motivation. Low relationship low task behavior.
Most important task is to accurately assess the maturity level of followers and to model
behavior appropriately. Situational leadership includes leader helping its followers mature.

Leadership style and the effective power bases vary with maturity of follower. Direct
relationship between kind of power base and leadership style at various maturity levels of
followers.
The power perception profile was created to provide leaders feedback on their power baes.
Two versions of PPP are available, one measures self-perception of power and other
measures individual’s perception of another’s power.